DISQUS

I must say the burning life grid is looking fantastic this year... Better constructions, and for some reason the general quality level seems to have improved.. I haven't noticed as many houses and rediculous builds on the playa. Also there is no infighting going on between the staff which is a welcome relief! Got really immature last year.

Unfortunately this year I wasn't able to secure a plot so our regular 24/7 electronic music events aren't happening this time around. We had a ball last year!

Daniel Voyager I have no idea what 'TSL' is.. Anybody else in the know ?

See some of you there for the burn!

That's a pity that we're not getting this info any more as it is relavent, specially to investors and such like.

Perhaps we should try and press LL to bring back the full-metrics..

Cheers

This is interesting news for sure...

I'm checking it out as we speak.... Looks a lot more chat-roomy than the SL experience.

Google doing just about everything now!!

Surprised the CEO hasn't got all that much experience in SL...

Which is a bit of a shame that he is probably new to the clunky SL interface and is still only 6 months behind getting to know the virtual world well.

But Imust say I'm optimistic (unlike you Lowelle heheh) that the new guy will help co-ordinate some imporvement in the system. A very difficult job considering having a staff of people working remotely all over the world working in their own time and not in an office where the pressure is on.... Probably a very different scenario from what this CEO is used to.

I look forward to the changes that he brings about..

Thanks for the article though metaverse journal, please keep us informed of developments..

Hear hear, what Wolfie says x 100

Although I don't mind the current ABC layout *that* much... I think parts of it are pretty cool, I haven't seen what's happened to laneways but from what I last saw it's pretty neat...

I do think that they could put more into it it really seems like interest has died off, what happened to those discussions they had last year, that was pretty interesting...
If they had kept that going, perhaps less frequently and with more advertising, like a general noticenboard at the tp home location with general events happening in SL.

I find the biggest problem for me is not knowing when events are happening. Sure they announce them on the groups, but I'm often not around when these announcements take place, nor are many others.

It would be fantastic if they can get things into gear there, and I'd like to hear from some ABC admin on this topic if somebody can point them to it..

JJJ club not even having permission to play it's own stream ? That is ridiculous. I can't see any legal issue with this, I thought the whole purpose was to reach as many ears as possible with advertising, news, etc. etc. , isn't that where our taxes go??

Teething problems....

I believe this sort of thing is inevitable... At least it's an improvement over the things just randomly going down --- it's actually showing that they know exactly what will be down and what will be able to handle, so I don't see this as a negative thing at all, in fact, I think it's a sign that they're making progress :-)

I think it's great that SL has some steady competition now, I believe that it will help them speed things up and get things up to quality.

They have a good lead over vastpark at the moment and a massive community. I'm kind of hoping vastpark isn't quite what it's touted to be as the seperation in communities will do nothing for the entire virtual world meme.

I'd like to your thoughts if you have checked this out Lowell, and also more news on openlife's qualities would be cool !

Yeah it's understandable that they don't want to rush in and open up remote servers, considering the technicalities of SL.

First of all , there is content and source code that needs to be protected. Putting this is the hands of other service providers around the world would definitely be an issue in privacy, as well as stability for the backend software (rerouting of lots of details). Remember the backend software isn't open source yet.. So essentially if objects, textures etc. are to be propogated to servers around the globe, they would have to have some sort of regulation over the resources downloaded by the requesting servers with all the asset files... A guarantee that no copying work will take place (remember the copy-bot issue of 2007 or was that 2006..), so there is an issue with trust there and I don't believe licensing issues in this regard is somethingk that could get knocked over in a fortnight.

When I first started in SL in 2006 I found stability to be much worse than it is now.. I was running on 500ms lag at best, nowadays it's something like 150ms lag which is actually very good, considering data is constantly being fed from my home in Brisbane through Australia's networks all the way to San Fran...

Secondly the finance systems and details of what exactly a remote server will host is something that needs proper development time... Something which happens to fall to a slightly lower priority than client crashing, teleport problems, inventory problems, friends list issues, things going missing etc. etc.

I agree with the Linden, that right now, it *is* essentially a rumour that telstra want to maintain their own servers, there has been no official mentions...

I've got much faith in 2008 being a year of good progress technical wise... am looking forward to new front end clients and the concept of being able to invite outsiders easily to particular events sounds fantastic.

Rather disappointing results.. I'd certainly love to see the numbers increase and a viable market to work with.. I think the clincher is that there is really very little to do to keep people coming back for more, outside of the university sphere. And marketing and starting off ventures takes lots of time and patience within SL and ultimately is not worth the cost, until, things improve ;)

I believe this year will show vast improvements for Second Life's stability...

Hopefully really soon cos I get logged out every minute on SL at the moment, making it almost unusable for me..

The only place that seems okay is the bigpond servers :/

Happy Birthday sloz!!!
And many more :D

Thanks for the tops work ......

That's fantastic news.. It's taken some time, but I do wonder how true this is and if it is that's awesome.. I'm keen to see how Second Life runs when you're only 1000km away from the central hub... Hmmmm !!!

Hopefully it doesn't result in more network problems , it'd suck to get stuck on bigpond servers and not be able to teleport out ;)

That's very true, Lowell, both Pond & ABC events ran in tandem - they both arrived on the scene at pretty much the same time, too, and I do wonder about that.

Has anybody got any reviews of this particular event ?

I went to this event and I must say, this was probably one of the worst organized events I've found on SL...

The announcer refused to use text as a communication tool, and had his microphone turned on the whole time ... He did have a good go at giving a sort of running commentary, but then after the race there was a half hour where we listened to him typing and breathing into the microphone, without any response or any inclincation of what was actually going on...

I think the majority of folks where standing around in IM, waiting for something to happen. Very unclear , and confusing... While it's a good start, let's hope they can better that next year..

There is some political activity going on now , in fact...
Send me an IM, Lowell, and I will get you some information on it..

I thought I might as well comment here as well as on the other thread..

My predictions are that we will see a continual decline, especially after all the issues that Second Life has had in the last few weeks, I think those issues definitely aren't good in terms of retention..

Gary mentioned in the other thread that a large part of this is due to the summer season over here.. I think that there is truth in there, but perhaps one of the shades in the system dynamic. Remember that the retention ratio of new Second Lifers is or was, something like 10%, which I think is a relatively low amount, but hopefully will improve with future bug fixes in the system and useability.

The number of documentaries on Second Life and news stories in media such as the age, sydney morning herald has most definitely been on the decrease.. Last I saw related news was over 4 or 5 months ago.

So my prediction is a dip in numbers from now and it should level out and even increase around about the end of November, when uni and high school are closed and summer party season has taken effect...

Yep, this trend is almost to be expected, after all the news worthy programs, which in a way make SL look more exciting than it is in RL ;)

Personally, I think companies and the media are holding their breathe... When havoc comes out and bugs are ironed out so there are no tp problems, rezzing issues, inventory issues, more user friendly interfaces for new folks, better default sounds (that clunky booop sound is so irritatating), and more *reliability*, then I can see other companies joining in with SL, and then we'd probably see the users increasing, once again...

Also , places like the Pond have put together some really nice sims and what not.. They have a club there, a pub, yet there has not been one event there. They are obviously missing the point that live music in SL is one of the biggest drawcards on SL atm...

So for the most part, I think a lot of these 'new users' probably walked around lost crashing a few times, bumped into a few 'rude' IM'ing folks at the outback bar, could not find anything of interest and probably never come back!

I think it's largely due to population numbers that we don't have such a thing happening...

But that should not hold us back!

The relay for life was probably one of the best things I've seen on SL to date!!! Not sure how much they made in the end , though..

Great effort to anybody who puts some effort in to improve the Aussie culture on SL...

No wonder the SL numbers in australia are *dropping* and not growing... There's *nothing to do* and it is boring!..

This effort is most commendable , though, and anything to do with community events will make me want to spend more time in SL..

The pond opened up about 8 months ago now. Can anybody list 1 thing that they have done in terms of entertainment to bring the community together, other than the original builds, which where done by Gary Hazlett...

I like the voice feature and will use it often...

I think it needs an easy mute button tho as I can imagine at times it will start to get distracting...

A little bit of everything is the spyce..

Overall, I would say my experience has been good, if not better than what it has been..

I can't see voice being a major hurdle as it was brought in with the first look viewer which has been tested for quite some time now.

To add to that last statement, it sure felt like loads of people about... I think that might have been folks that had done the full circuit when I think about it...

Thank you for this report,,, I went to check this relay for life out after reading this and I must say I was a long long way from disappointed.

And I think the event went a little bit unnoticed by folks and really didn't get the appreciation that it deserved.

It was a terrific effort. There was live entertainment for 2 days, people mingling in camps, great stuff going on, all amongst the tracks leading through hills, in caves, and some of the best scenery in Second Life, and all completely original...

For a collaborative, community event, I think this stands out tops. I haven't seen Second Life used so well for such a good cause, and I really believe they deserve far more honourable mentions than they have been given for pushing boundaries for the second life community.

Thank you very much it was great.... HAd trouble making donations though :( Hope they did ok !

It said something like 1400 visitors when I was there on Saturday afternoon, which isn't all that much....

I don't know how folks could complain about SL being interoperable with other virtual worlds at this stage..

It's still early days for SL! Got lots to do yet..

Those other virtual worlds will have to wait until SL reaches a stage where they can start to think about that...