Virtual worlds as lawn mowing
Although it’s mostly a throwback to the mid to late 20th Century, there’s still a significant cohort of Australians who associate mowing the lawn with the ‘Aussie lifestyle’ (I hate generalisations, but bear with me). There’s no shortage of people who still dream of owning their own land, on which they can inflict the weekly [...]
The Big Spaceship lands
If you’ve been following Second Life, you’ll know usability issues have been key. As we’ve repeatedly rehashed here, 2008 was cited by Linden Lab as the year for improving the Second Life experience. There’s quite rightly been criticism of the number of issues outstanding with the user experience.
The tide may be turning on that [...]
Reducing your Second Life lag
Tateru Nino has written a very useful guide on minimising lag in Second life – you can read it in full here.
Try saying ‘Sim Ping’ five times really quickly
Whilst talking Linden Lab, CEO Mark Kingdon has provided a heads-up on progress toward a more usable Second Life. Lots more improvements are promised, the [...]
Ups and downs for Linden Lab
It’s been a big week for Linden Lab. They’ve recorded their highest ever level of concurrent users (more than 68 thousand online at one time) – positive growth albeit with some intermittent login issues at the same time. We’re looking forward to the next lot of metrics from Linden Lab to see what impact the [...]
Second Life – on the wane for aussies?
Asher Moses from the Sydney Morning Herald has run a story titled ‘Few lives left for Second Life’. It’s based on research undertaken by the Queensland University of Technology’s Kim MacKenzie, who’s completing her honours thesis on Second Life and business.
The research findings aren’t surprising in a lot of respects – there are significant areas [...]
Beware the bling in Second Life
Linden Lab’s Pastrami Linden has flagged a new feature in the current Release Candidate viewer. The ‘Avatar Rendering Cost’ option will show a number that equates to the cumulative graphics generation impact of that avatar – the more non-standard avatar features you’ve added the higher the number.
It’s a useful tool to determine what may be [...]
Linden Lab’s Communication Manager commences
Katt Linden is the new Communications Manager and she’s announced a review of the current communications mechanisms like the blog and Second Life forums.
Katt is claiming a brief of monitoring the blogosphere and getting some changes happening but is also forthright on patience being needed. I’m not sure how much patience is left in some [...]
