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The Archives
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10.01.08New Second Life User Interface: With Vectorform, Will It All Be Surfaces?M Linden recently announced that the user interface for Second Life is being redesigned, making it "more user friendly" and while I scoured the forums I didn't see the name of the firm announced by the Lab. All indications are, however, that Vectorform may be extending its work with the Lab to a larger project that includes the viewer - and the hot bed for all this deep thought may not be California but...Detroit (or at least partially). (Click above for larger image, from Vectorform Web site). And Vectorform needs YOU. Well, they need you if you live in the Detroit area I ...
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09.29.08Linden Lab Announces New Interface for Second Life ViewerEdit: Headline changed - the viewer changes will be primarily interface but could include "carefully considered" changes to the underlying code base. See M's comments on the SL forums. Mark Kingdon announced that an outside design firm is hard at work on a new, user-friendly viewer for Second Life. The announcement comes in a longer update on his progress since taking the helm 4 months ago, and ironically was posted at the same time as I was sitting on a panel discussion about Philip's vision for Second Life. And what's interesting is that while the panelists all seemed to think that Philip ...
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09.22.08Philip Rosedale on Second Life, Usability, and Getting Grandma a New JobSo imagine for a minute that you're a coding geek. And you read science fiction sometimes, and you know who Ray Kurzweil is and you actually believe in the Singularity. Now, imagine that somehow your geekiness lands you in Silicon Valley and somehow through a combination of raw talent and luck you find yourself given a few of the keys to the magic kingdom - the one where open source and virtual reality and Chai tea all mix it up and people don't mistake TechCrunch for high-performance cereal. That's something like where Philip Rosedale ended up - he was given ...
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09.20.08Attracting New Users One-on-One: Linden Lab Lets You SLurl Your FriendsLinden Lab has retooled SLurls to allow you to invite friends, family, co-workers, and random strangers to join you directly in-world and in so doing is taking yet another bite at the first hour of the new user's experience. Now, for those of you who don't know a SLurl from a tinyURL, you're not alone - in fact, it took me about 6 months of being in Second Life before I understood the idea that every location on the grid could be represented by the equivalent of a Web address. The idea here is sound: think of it like social marketing. You ...
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09.13.08Head of Second Life Stability Communicates PrioritiesEdit: Thankfully, FJ is a Linden, meaning he has an avatar, and he has a Linden name. Subtle point? I still don't think so...but Katt clarified below and on the main blog, so this post has been edited. I wish I could post something intelligent about VPNs or latency pings or whatever the heck people talk about when they talk about stability. Actually, I don't wish that - I just wish for things to work, and to be stable, and to not crash. So I have no idea whether the post by Frank Ambrose on the Second Life blog makes any ...
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09.08.08Help Extend Second Life to the WebThink that the Grid shouldn't be a closed off "place"? Wish it was integrated into the wider Web? Well the Lab has a job for you: Linden Lab is looking for talented, creative web developers to extend the Second Life platform to the Web. We are looking for someone who has experience developing web-based products and services both internal to a medium-size company, and external to a customer base of tens of millions, with an eye towards scalable, internationalized solutions. We are a small team with an important long-term mission, so we work hard to keep our workload reasonable. (Reasonable workload refers, ...
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09.03.08SLim is Thin: And Is it a Client or an Appliance?SLim was launched today with a press release, blog post, and demo at the Virtual Worlds conference here in Los Angeles. And. Well. It's underwhelming. Tateru at Massively has comprehensive coverage of what the Lab calls a "client". Tateru gives a description of the cumbersome process used to download it, install it, sign up for it, and try to synch it. Let's assume for a bit though, like the comments on Massively, that it was launched so that they had something to demo at the booth at VW and talk up at SLCC. A few things to iron out maybe. At ...
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09.03.08Second Life SLim Client at Virtual World ConferenceLinden Lab will be showing off its new SLim client at the virtual world conference in LA today...or at least talking about the integration of the Vivox integrated voice chat system within the "light viewer". The Lab is pushing collaboration and education at the gathering of virtual hopefuls, with Rivers Run Red talking up its Immersive Workspaces, Global Kids, Northrop Grumman and Sand Diego State University all taking turns to talk up SL as the next great thing in virtual worlds. Er, new new old great. Or something. The slant of the conference is entertainment - this is Hollywood afterall. Stay tuned. ...
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08.29.08Blizzard vs Linden Lab: Who Wins in Graphic Improvements?Philip Rosedale recently explained that Second Life is a far cry better than browser-based worlds like Google's Lively by comparing it to Warcraft: “In a browser you can’t render a 3D environment with sound, lighting, shadows, the actual sort of World of Warcraft like…you know uh most people have seen that…the real 3D rendered experience.” 3D Rendered Experience: Windlight-less? But as Warcraft rolls out graphic enhancements that take advantage of new graphic chips only in expansion packs, there's a difference even in those um, sound-filled, light-soaked, shadowy rooms. Videogamer.com asks WOW lead game designer Tom Chilton and production director J Allen Brack their thoughts ...
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08.26.08Resident Experience Master Torley Banned from TalkingFuture changes and announcements, pending unveiling, or maybe M just got sick of Torley's vibrant highlighter-marker yellows and pinks, but for now he's been pushed off the Second Life site. As Torley tells his loyal followers: If you're wondering why this is on my personal blog instead of the official Second Life Blog and why you haven't seen the KB Article of the Week lately either, it's because Linden Lab is undergoing changes in communication policy and preparing for future improvements. As much as that doesn't seem to make sense, I can't go into details now, and I would've let you know ...
recent posts
- Life as Levelling Up
- Virtual Worlds Prove That Life Is Too Real
- Philip Rosedale and Magic
- New Second Life User Interface: With Vectorform, Will It All Be Surfaces?
- Teenage Gaming Improves civic engagement: PEW Study
- US Treasury Teaches Teens to Manage Credit
- Microsoft’s Future Vision: Immersive, 3D, and Surface-Deep
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