It is early in the year and not much is happening at Linden Lab. I see the SL-blogosphere covering all sorts of things. Even the Subscrib-O-matic’s seem to be sending out old stuff. So, I’m skimming news and watching for anything interesting in between playing with Blender and Avastar. A few of the things I think are interesting:

Inara has a post up about Profile feeds direct messaging: Lab confirms “turned off”. If you have used the web site My.SecondLife.com  to send IM’s, you won’t be able to do that anymore. Peter Gray of Linden Lab confirmed to Inara the feature has been turned off due to spammers.

Honour Mcmillan has posted and article asking for volunteers to help with her primary focus in of creating and growing a corps of LEA Volunteers. For details and the type of volunteers needed see: Calling for Volunteers in Second Life. 

There is an ice sculpture contest in Second Life™. Visit Ren Fair, in-world, for more information. I would think with materials and mesh this could be awesome. But, it may be too soon for enough people to have learned how to use materials.

The Grid was a mess Thursday (Week #1). They had to do… or were doing… unscheduled maintenance. The inventory system was flakey for a number of hours, 2±PM to 7±PM SLT/PST. (See: Unscheduled) I couldn’t change outfits and my avatar was a cloud. I heard others in chat complaining of similar problems.

In the UK some up-standing employees of the governments Environmental Agency were  on about the massive corruption and lies being told by EA’s management. The abuse of tax payers by the system is huge. They have a site devoted to exposing the government waste in the agency. See: Inside the Environment Agency. We could use such a group in the US.

I notice what is not being reported by media about the Russian ice-breaker trapped in the Antarctic summer ice, the trip for climate reporters was paid for by the Australian tax payers: Australian taxpayers will pay $400,000 cost for climate scientist’s ship stuck in ice. Total cost “millions”. The point of the trip was to gather support for climate change and show how fast the polar ice is melting. Oops!

It seems 2013 was the 4^th warmest year… but only since satellite records started being kept. That last part is not making the news, it is sort of neglected. Only the 4^th warmest is reported.

Satellite records only extend back to Nov. 16, 1978. Detail data is available from the University of Alabama, Huntsville. For details on the collection and funding and links see: Global Temperature Report: December 2013.

Numerious blogs are covering the announcement of a virtual OpenSim world for Canadians. See: Hypergrid.

Hamlet has an article that asks about who you think are the most influential on SL. See: Klout’s Odd List of Top Second Life Influencers Makes Me Wonder About Klout’s Influence. I guess after some thinking and after posting my comment there, it has to be the SL residents. As oblivious and self occupied as most residents seem, it is only when something brings us together that things seem to change.

The SL Wiki page: All keyboard shortcut keys, got some updates. Nothing major. But, it is a handy page if you don’t know about it.

A sister page that is also handy is: Second Life Viewer 3 Menus.

Strawberry Singh has a Happy New Year post up. It has links to some interesting things. She is getting into Pinterest and expects to post more information there. See: Happy New Year!

A new thing for 2014 is In Web Site Search. For bloggers this could be a big deal. See: Watch Out Google, AddSearch — Like Swiftype — Wants To Stop In-Website Search From Sucking. Google has some tools for those that want to add them to their blog. But, in ‘no-find’ cases the visitor ends up back on Google and often on another site. If you blog this is information you should probably be aware of.

Another odd little thing I added to my browser is Curiyo. I haven’t used it much but when I do, I love it. It is an add-in for browsers that when I click and hold on a word; it then brings up a popup with the definition and some interesting related links.

Drudge report continues to be one of the top sources for news. One of today’s stories: Antarctic ice shelf melt ‘lowest EVER recorded, global warming is NOT eroding it’. I have only seen Drudge reporting on: “Is there a secret society attempting to recruit the best coder breakers in the world, using clues that spans across the globe and Internet?” No that sounds interesting to me. It reminds me of ARG’s that Cyan Worlds, the makers of the Myst games, used to promote their games.

Have a Happy and Interesting New Year…

I wish all of you all the best.