Ebbe pledges to speed up Marketplace

Linden Lab’s new CEO is on a roll and appears to be getting stuck into his new job with enthusiasm and determination.

Answering to another Twitter request Ebbe confirmed that they knew Marketplace was horrendously slow and promised to fix it.

Something that will make a lot of people very happy.

 

Update:

NEW starter avatars coming to Second Life

Details are unclear but new CEO of Linden Lab Ebbe Altberg has confirmed on twitter that there will be brand new avatars for people just joining Second life next month.

It is not yet clear if this is something Ebbe himself implemented or if it is a Rod Humble legacy.
As Ebbe has just spend his first week at Linden Lab and has been mostly busy getting to know his team, the latter is more likely.

It is hard to say if this is a good or bad thing as we don’t know what these avatars will look like yet.

But I hope it is something that will make new users happier, some nice new avatars with some swanky fitted mesh outfits perhaps?

 

What you want to ask Ebbe Altberg, new CEO of Linden Lab

I’ve been invited to have a chat with Ebbe Altberg, the brand new CEO of Linden Lab.

I have of course a big pile of questions and there probably is not enough time to ask them all, but I wanted to give the readers of this blog a chance to ask him some as well.

So, leave your question to mr Altberg in the comments section below and if I get the chance I’ll ask it.

show #6: the reality of virtuality

Another Drax Files Radio Hour!
With things to win!

the drax files radio hour

show #6

voila =  here is show numero 6: fascinating discussion this week with philosopher [and alphaville herald reporter] peter ludlow [starts around 32:00] about governance in virtual worlds, griefer management & investigative journalism plus: one billion rising against violence against women [we talk with saffia widdershins about the sl version of today’s global event].

enjoy [here or on stitcher]!

and here are links for further reading:

– breaking news: loki eliot does station id & crazy sl light reflection test!

– humanoid animations give-away: what are the two methods of making animations for games/virtual worlds? send answer with subject line “giveaway” to radio@draxfiles.com, the deadline is 2/21/14

– the gridnauts from ll and ibm teleport across grids in 2008:

– fitted mesh released [and our guests eboni khan & shai delacroix have opinions on it!]

– ll publishes faq on required tax/account documentation

– stem and…

View original post 189 more words

Drax Files radio show episode 4

Episode 4 of the Drax Files Radio Show with Jo Yardley is online.

We’re talking about Rod Humble leaving and talking to lots of people about their opinion on the current situation.

But of course we talk about other news stories;

You can listen to this episode by clicking here.

Enjoy and let us know what you think.

Sponsoring a monument to victims of Nazism

In RL history plays an important part of my life, it is my job and I am very close to several people who lived trough the Second World War.

I am very happy that history and especially the war is also very important to many of the people involved in the 1920s Berlin Project, the sim I started almost 5 years ago.

It isn’t much of a surprise though as of course we are reminded of the dark years that followed the Weimar republic on almost a daily basis here in Second Life’s 1920s Berlin.

There is no escaping the political tension and the dark clouds on the horizon, even in this virtual world.

I am very proud that thanks to the people of this project and the many random visitors of 1920s Berlin, we collected enough money to sponsor a ‘Stolperstein’ monument, these are little monuments, the size of a cobblestone, to individual victims of Nazism.

You can find these stones in the pavements all over Europe.

We have put another donation meter at the entrance of our sim (click for slurl) and hope to collect enough money this year to sponsor 2 of these stones.

More about this on the 1920s Berlin blog here; http://1920sberlinproject.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/supporting-a-monument-to-victims-of-nazism/

This is the stone we supported last year, you can see it on the Rykestrasse 54 in RL Berlin.

Drax files Radio show with Jo Yardley episode 2

Second episode of the VR and SL podcast ‘Drax files Radio show with Jo Yardley’ now online;
http://draxfiles.com/2014/01/17/show-2-the-legacy-of-osprey-therian/

New Second Life, virtual reality and metaverse podcast

First episode of new Second Life, virtual reality and metaverse podcast; The Drax Files radio hour [with Jo Yardley], is now online!

http://draxfiles.com/2014/01/10/show-1-oculus-nsa-fitted-mesh/

Celebrity regrets turning Second Life offer down

Tags

"second life", bit coin, Lily Allen

This is a funny way for Second Life to reach the world news again, although the story makes little sense.

Lily Allen, who apparently is a world famous star, posted this on twitter two days ago;

It is of course very funny to hear that someone regrets not performing in Second Life, even though the main motive here is just financial reward.

This starlet has over 4 million followers on Twitter and 3 million on Facebook, so it is a big name who is now making some free advertising for our virtual world.

I wonder who made her the offer!

But if this really happened 5 years ago, she is mistaken.

Bitcoin has just celebrated its 5th anniversary so if this indeed happened 5 years ago, there would not have been “hundreds of thousands” of bitcoins in existence.

She probably means Linden Dollars, a lot less valuable but generally more stable and more easy to convert to real money.

Still, in the end Second Life got some free publicity!

 

Improving avatar animations

I’ve never liked Animation Overriders, just to stop myself from walking like a drunk duck, I had to go spend ages looking for one of those AO’s, spend money (as a Dutch person, I hate that), and then I had to fine tune it, remember to activate it all the time, deactivate it for certain objects, I had to walk around with some ugly button on my screen, etc, etc.

And being someone who wants her avatar to look as much like her RL me as possible, I wanted an AO that made me walk like a grumpy, tired 41 year old woman, not some sexy catwalk model.
There isn’t much of a market for AO’s like that.
In SL you’re eather a 20 something wild young thing, or a 90 year old granny.

Anyway, now that LL has recently changed the skeleton of our avatars to work better with the new mesh clothes that actually adjust to your body in stead of us having to adjust our bodies to the clothes, I was wondering if perhaps it was about time they also updated our custom animations.

I don’t know how old the custom animations are, I’ve been here for about 5 years now and I don’t remember them changing.
Our regular walk and especially our run, are rather silly.
I think it would be relatively easy to give our avatars some decent animations, there are enough very talented animators in SL who could do a great job here.
We don’t need much, just a more realistic and normal male and female walk, run and sit.
This way we also don’t kill the AO market, most AO’s offer a lot more options and most people in SL will still want to buy an AO.

But especially the penniless noobs will be a lot happier and us oldtimers will be less annoyed whenever we turn our AO off to cut down on lag.

I think this is a small job that could make a lot of people very happy.