The Kitey grid is adding a Market Place. Daniel Voyager had a bit about it. You can get the details here: Kitely Market Info. It’s doors should open in early September this year.
Second Life™ on an iPad is a bit of news. But, don’t get too excited. This is just a case of the iPad being used as a remote terminal to a desktop computer. There is a short discussion over on SLUniverse.
If you missed my article on the Microsoft Surface Pro running SL, check it out: Mobile Second Life.
VWBPE or Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is starting up in Second Life July 24 to 27. The Lab is featuring the event in their blog. See: VWBPE Second Life. There is a parallel event by the same VWBPE group in Cloud Party, the same days.
Hair Fair 2013 runs to the 28th. It is popular. Just getting into a region can require patience. Also, I’ve had problems in regions I think need a restart. Regions seem to get horribly slow at rendering textures. Some regions just refuse to render staying gray.
Hair Fair is in regions running the main server channel software. So, it should work pretty well. There are plenty of regions running the main version where I don’t have problems with texture render.
Also, some shops render quickly and others slowly, if at all. I suspect that has to do with the textures and sizes used by the merchant.
I can’t prove it, but my hypothesis is that any region with 30 or more avatars is going to suck texture-render-performance-wise. But, when things are working, it is great. So, early in the morning PDTime there are less people around.
Still, I think getting there and seeing the shops and merchandise is worth the effort. There are some amazingly creative shops.
I am getting a collection of demos to try. I take them home to try on. My thinking is that reduces the demands on the regions servers at the show… and they render faster at home.
There is an android flavor of splashtop as well, and multiple versions, including a free one. Works good Streaming SL on my nexus 7… but SL have not an ideal UI for tablets and mobile devices.