Linden Lab is ending discounted rates for not-for-profits and educational institutions, according to an announcement today on their blog:

“All education and non-profit private regions of any type, purchased after Dec. 31, 2010, will be invoiced at standard (i.e. non-discounted) pricing. All currently discounted renewals which occur after Dec. 31, 2010, will be adjusted to the new price at that time. To continue to provide entry-level, private spaces to educators just launching their programs, we will be providing Homestead and Open Space regions to qualifying organizations without their meeting the retail full-region criterion. Customer Support will be available to answer any questions that you may have about these changes.”

I’m not really up on the education market or what non-profits pay for things like Web hosting, text books, event space or other products, but my guess is that with the global economy sputtering along that increasing prices in these sectors isn’t particularly commonplace.

Instituting a 200% price increase, as Linden Lab has done today, seems to me more akin to what a company would try to do if they were looking to exit a particular market and does nothing to change the narrative that the company is ripe for a sale, takeover or meltdown.

We do limited work in cause marketing and education. But without any reason given I’m left to guess what’s motivating the Lab, and I can’t for the life of me think of anything other than falling profits, a wish to be a pure consumer company, or some sort of insight into the appetite for higher costs from these communities that I don’t have (a latent desire to, um, spend more?)

Regardless of which of these reasons it might be (or is there some reason I’m not able to guess at?) the move by Linden Lab represents nothing short of a blow to their credibility and judgement, and while I’ve long been a supporter of the community and possibilities of the virtual world, it’s clearly time to start dusting off the blog posts looking at the alternatives.

While a move in the education market might not seem to have implications for enterprise, my feeling is that this move erodes trust in the viability of the Lab’s strategies and indicates they are taking a lowest common denominator view of who they think their target Second Life user should be.

Metanomics welcomes Professor Noam Chomsky for a very special episode of on Tuesday October 12th at 12:00 p.m. PDT.

Professor Chomsky needs little introduction. Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy.

His work has been at times provocative, always insightful, and has influenced generations. His appearance on Metanomics brings Professor Chomsky into a virtual world where a global community can join in the discussion and represents a highlight event for the Metanomics community.

For more information, visit the Metanomics Web site.

(Disclosure, as if you couldn’t figure this out: my company owns and produces Metanomics, so yes, this is an ad. See you there. )

I’m feeling in a predictive mood. I suppose I’m still gasping at the luck I had in predicting a ‘merger’ of the Teen and Main Grids a few hours before it was launched. It was a total fluke of course, but the prediction was based on, well, some facts I suppose: namely, Philip’s “what if” scenarios presented in the hallways and workshops at the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC).

So I was thinking about this, and realizing he presented a few other speculative sorts of asides, which I’m now starting to think were his equivalent of either trial balloons or softening the market for coming attractions. I’m going to guess the latter, because Philip doesn’t strike me as the type to test the waters too much: if something makes sense technically and he feels it’s a good thing to do, he’ll do it, but in such a way that you come away with the idea that he had floated it past you and let you provide input into the process.

At SLCC Philip brought up the idea of server-side rendering and different ways to experience Second Life outside of a client download. So I’m going to take this as not being a trial balloon, but rather a little wink at the direction he was headed in (I’ll need to think a little more about controller-less access and whether 3D cameras will have us accessing SL through our Wiis).

So with that in mind, I’m going to guess that Second Life will soon be available in a browser, using server-side rendering such as Otoy. Server-side rendering allows two things:

- You don’t need a high-powered machine to access 3D immersive content. OnLive, for example, allows you to play console games such as Assasin’s Creed without a download, and without the need for a high-end graphics card.
- There is no client to download.

The heavy-lifting of ‘rezzing’ the world, in other words, is done in the ‘cloud’ and you can still navigate through the environment as if you were accessing it through a client.

The probability is that this would be both a revenue generator for the Lab (access via the cloud might include free time, say a few hours, plus a charge for additional time to cover the server costs, and you’re on your own with your ISP, what with bandwidth metered or throttled in some parts of the world) and that server-side rendering would not include all of the features of being “in-world” – build tools, for example, might be excluded or, at the very least, expensive to use because your time is being metered.
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So I woke up early this morning and for some reason decided I’d post about the Teen Grid and its imminent demise. Now, I don’t usually get much right, but a scant 5 hours after my post, Terrence Linden announced, well, that Teens would be ‘welcome’ on the Main Grid.

(I’m not given to gloating, or not visible gloating anyways, but I just kind of felt like it tonight, it’s really rainy out is the reason).

Tateru and Lalo noted in the comments to my last post that the Teens were always using the same “grid”, although I can’t help noticing that the Lab itself uses the same terminology that I did, regardless of the reality that it was all one big mess of servers:

It has been several weeks since we announced that Teen Second Life, our Second Life grid for 13- to 17-year-olds, will be closing at the end of this year, and that we would be admitting 16- and 17-year-olds to the main grid. Today, we are excited to tell you that we will be able to continue serving all of the educational and not-for-profit communities of the Teen Grid, including those that serve 13- to 15-year-olds, without an interruption in service.

I speculated this morning that if such a move were to happen, it would include a pin-to-estate type feature and that one of the benefits would be that teachers could move more freely between the teen areas and the adult ones. Terrence confirms this approach:

The 13- to 15-year-old students affiliated with these organizations will be unable to visit any regions except those of their hosting organization, and those accounts will not have the ability to search the Grid or to purchase items from the Marketplace. Unlike on Teen Second Life, adults that work with these students will now be a part of the broader Second Life experience, allowing them to bring rich educational content to their students. The ability to invite organization-approved guest speakers and other approved members of the community to safely interact these students will further enhance their learning experience. For more details, see the Teen Second Life transition wiki page.

I’m disappointed, however, that students won’t be able to sell on the Marketplace (or purchase from it). I really think there would be something enriching to allow kids to make and sell stuff.

Regardless, and as Tateru and Lalo pointed out – well, um, what exactly is the difference between this and what was there before? The big closure of the Teen Grid has ended with, well, a Teen Section of the Grid, and the ability for adults to move back-and-forth, but I’m not entirely sure how this will look any different to what was there before.

Second Life is lowering the age limit, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as lowering the age (I mean, surely there are 17-year olds running around the Grid?), and I’ve been wondering, lately, whether this might be a good thing.

There’s something I find intriguing about what the impact will be of a slightly younger demographic. Their interests might be different (more games, more socializing?) but there’s also the possibility that you’ll end up with some newly ambitious and engaged content creators (who, yeah, can probably learn Blender a lot faster than I can).

This isn’t to say that I don’t have concerns, but they’re the same concerns I’d have elsewhere on the Web. (Did you know, for example, that Goldshire, in World of Warcraft, has been policed a few times for being, a, um, hook-up location?)

But in conjunction with already announcing that they’re lowering the age from 18 to 16, Linden Lab is also likely to announce that the Teen Grid will merely be relocated rather than abandoned altogether, with schools able to host their classes within a partitioned section of the Main Grid.
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Mesh is coming to Second Life. I’ve been dealing with this idea for close to three years now, when I first realized that things like prototyping and architecture could never fully “live” in Second Life until you could import mesh models.

I’ve written about it, advocated for it, spoke about it at the recent Second Life Community Center, posted thousands of words on the topic, held events at Metanomics including community forums and a full Masterclass broadcast in-world and on the Web which reached thousands of viewers.

I’ve posted examples, discussed tools, promoted things like Prim Composer as a sort of interim step, discussed how mesh will allow integration with things like Papervision, Unity3D and WebGL. I’ve held workshops and shows with architects to demonstrate use cases where mesh would make sense. I’ve suggested where mesh might head, including a road map that would include editable mesh and the ability to paint mesh objects.

I’ve been talking about this for three years, I’ve been vocal about it on every conceivable channel there is.

I’ve also written about Second Life culture and the economy. And I’ve been very clear in my opinions, across hundreds of posts, that I feel that Second Life is a world and that decisions that are made by its users and more particularly by Linden Lab should be viewed through more than one prism: it’s not just a technology. It’s a unique site of culture and community, it has an economy that’s worth millions of dollars in trade.

I’ve interviewed Tom Boellstorff twice for this reason: because the distinct perspective of an anthropologist is one lens, one example, of how you can look at something like Second Life and see how decisions on policy and implementation of new technology impact the fabric that ties people together – something like adding voice, for example, gives new tools to the people that live in that culture and changes it.

I have rarely opposed advances in technology: the problem has rarely been what’s been added. The problem has almost always been the things that were broken, the things that were never fixed, and the things that were never finished.

Instead, I have fairly relentlessly advocated for discussions that are more holistic. I was asked to review Display Names, for example, and my response was fairly typical of how I view these things: I advocated for a broader assessment of how Display Names fit into a larger vision for identity management and self-expression, to move past the ‘widget’ or ‘feature’ into something more strategic and ennobling.

My advice usually goes unheeded.

When it comes to mesh, I was one of the first people to try to paint a broader picture of what it would make possible. I avoided the mesh beta for this very reason: I didn’t want to wait to talk about it, I’d just keep plugging away at it, holding forums at Metanomics, poking the Lab to try to get dates and clarification, and pointing people in the direction of tools and resources, ideas and examples.

I tried to place mesh in the broader framework not of what would be possible in-world, but rather what it might mean for how Second Life could influence a broader digital culture by allowing variable levels of immersion, the flowing of data and collaborative spaces across platforms, and how it might allow Second Life to attract and integrate with other creative communities.

I was also very clear through all of this that the impact of mesh on the economy and culture of Second Life should never be taken lightly and that a rich, open and community-based discussion should be facilitated by Linden Lab and others so that the introduction of mesh was considered against the larger frameworks in which Second Life operates.

Clearly, I did something wrong.
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Metanomics is hitting the road this year with a series of local meet-ups timed to show days. Our first live meet-up will be held at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina on October 4th, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. We’ll watch and participate in a Metanomics broadcast followed by discussion and networking.

For those of you who don’t know the show, Metanomics broadcasts weekly and is filmed in the virtual world of Second Life in front of a studio audience. Metanomics provides insight into the changes in governance, economics, policy, enterprise, education and the nature of work facilitated by newer technologies. Guests have included authors, researchers, technologists, professionals, theorists and government policy makers and recently celebrated 100 episodes.

How we communicate, learn and collaborate is changing. Metanomics has brought together a global audience in a virtual world to examine these changes, to debate the future, and to share with each other our expectations, questions and fears.

On the Road at Research Triangle Park
If you’re near Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, feel free to join us. We’ll “broadcast” the show and follow it with an informal discussion – about the show itself, the metaverse and virtual worlds, the changing nature of online communities, or whatever topics you’d like to bring to the table.

The event is co-sponsored by Metanomics and Startled Cat.

We’re considering future On the Road events in Washington, New York and San Francisco – or if you’d like to host one locally, drop us a line!

If you’d like to attend, please e-mail for more information. You can reach me via G-mail at dusan.writer.

Yes, virtual worlds have real economies too! But when Metanomics starts-up on October 4th, I’ll be a special guest host interviewing none other than Robert Bloomfield himself. Our focus will be on how virtual worlds can be used to understand real-world economies. (Any comments about Madoff or pyramid schemes will be deleted – *glances at C3*).

Metanomics is returning to its roots. The show started over 100 episodes ago on Mondays, back when there was still lag in Second Life, group chat didn’t always work, and voice still broke down (actually, I don’t think there WAS voice, so it was permanently borked). How far we’ve come!

So get this on your calendars, folks: Metanomics, Mondays, 12:00 pm SLT/PST.
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Put this in the category of, um…..well I have no idea what category to put it in, but my respect for Reed, Gianna and Draxtor just dropped a notch or two with their video (embedded below the fold) about the coming ability to import mesh objects into Second Life.

The video, which I’m sure is meant to be, um, funny, ends with the tag: “Mesh is Coming to Second Life….Deal with It”.

What’s even more astonishing is that Linden Lab is carrying the video on the Second Life youTube channel.

Now…I’m a believer that mesh is important, necessary, and will facilitate new forms of creativity in what is still the largest user-generated virtual world. But I’m also of the belief that it will have a significant impact on the Second Life economy, to the detriment of many.

To produce a video that thumbs its nose at anyone who doesn’t “get it” is arrogant and does nothing to easy anxiety that mesh imports are more likely to shift the opportunities for content creation in Second Life to a “professional class”.

Much of what’s missing in the discussion over mesh is any sort of thoughtful review or assessment of how it will be handled economically – the details are sketchy at best, and while the product folks at Linden Lab are treating it as something that falls under the category of ‘money-maker’, we’ve heard nothing about how they’ve evaluated the economic consequences of introducing the feature.
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Linden Lab is taking Viewer 2 up to 2.2, while in Amsterdam Catherine Linden is under a release of her own and is hunting down work in Europe. While most people outside of Second Life won’t particularly care about either of these things, it strikes me that the change, which was once fast and furious, is now slow, steady and sort-of sure. But we’ll see how things play out in the coming months.

Viewer 2.2
Its just over a month since Linden Lab announced Project Snowstorm, its open source project to bring viewer development under one stream (it was previously split between the main release and Snowglobe) and to act fast, make things easy and have fun doing it. Forget about the fact that filing JIRAs is hardly my idea of a good time.

Now, Tateru points out that the Snowstorm team has released a new version of the fabled Viewer 2 into the Beta Grid wilds, and within that month since the Lab went public with their plans, they accomplished an incredible feat: they completed stuff that’s stunningly obvious.

I mean – when did they launch the new viewer? A year ago or something? It feels like an eternity in any case, but it also feels as if it might be edging towards something that incorporates the blindingly clear: Second Life users have a pretty good bead on things that just make sense, and if the Lab can just implement some of them they can go along way towards moving the software from incredibly irritating to reasonably tolerable (with a line straight through to Fast, Easy and Fun!)

In any case, the main feature of the 2.2 release (which follows a bunch of patches this past month) is that the side panels (which most people hate but which I’ve, oddly, started to like) can now be un-docked.
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