Second Life in the News Week 38

I found a couple of new articles about Project Sansar. I’m only going to point out the stuff in the articles I found interesting.

Second Life eyes second act as virtual reality matures – Financial Times (FT)

Jolie Birdy
Jolie Birdy

The FT says the Lab has magazine covers from 2005 that tell about Second Life™ being the next big thing hanging in their offices.

FT points to Project Sansar, High Fidelity, and AltspaceVR as the coming new Virtual Worlds (VW).

FT quotes Wagner James Au (Hamlet), New World Notes, as saying fashion designers are the likely second category of VW users that will make money from VW’s. Presumably the first is those needing to build VW’s for various reasons.

I sure it will thrill many that Hamlet says the third money making category is probably going to be porn. I agree with him. Porn was the early money maker when the Internet started. Hamlet also thinks many big businesses will make the same mistakes they made in Second Life. They will jump into VW’s to look cutting edge, high tech with little or no idea what they are doing and whether it will make them money. 

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Server Updates Week 38

Both the main and RC channels are getting updates this week. This is a step up as several of the past weeks we have only seen one or the other get an update. Two packages are going into the RC channels.

Main

This update package has the Navmesh fix (BUG-9504). No other change is listed.

RC Channels

Blue Steel is getting a package that improves inventory performance. See my article: Second Life Inventory Update Week 37+.

Le Tigre and Magnum are getting a package that has fixes for:

  • BUG-9683 “Feature Request: llGetAttachedList() – returns a list of root keys of all visible attachments worn by an agent.”
  • BUG-9891 “[Feature Request] – llGetObjectDetails() constant OBJECT_CLICK_ACTION”

More Sansar Week 38

CNN Money has an article out titled: Company behind Second Life building virtual reality universe. They repeat much of what we already know. They have to catch their readers up on what they are talking about. But, there is an interesting item I found new.

inner thoughts..
inner thoughts..

Quoting:

Internally, Linden Lab employees are working on polishing the product [Sansar], building their own test worlds along the way. They’ve made a desert scene with crazy big machinery, weird futuristic lounges and a famous landmark. They’ve even created an exact replica of a conference room in Linden Lab’s San Francisco office, down to the objects on the desk.

I also saw in another place that the Lab is offering a VR workshop Sept. 18 at their offices.

WordPress Site Icon 2015 Tutorial

This month WordPress added Site Icons. I saw this when I updated my site to the latest release of WordPress and in looking at what is new, I saw the Site Icon feature. I lost my site icon when I moved my site from a Windows server to a Linux server. So, I have needed to redo it for some time. So, I figured this might be a quick way.

New WordPress Site Icon Setting - 9/2015
New WordPress Site Icon Setting – 9/2015

Prior to this a site owner could only use the Windows Favorite Icon and the Mac equivalent to create an icon that can be used with bookmarks. Not an exactly a user friendly thing. With release 4.3 I thought adding the site icon got easier. But, the feature isn’t what I expected or what I think most of us will expect. So, here is how to use a WP Site Icon and create a favorite icon that is used with bookmarks.

The WP Site Icon feature is for theme builders. It doesn’t do much for site owners that aren’t into coding. Konstantin Obenland, release lead for 4.3, says,

This v1 marries Jetpack’s Site Icon module with the Media Modal, reusing code from the Custom Header admin. For now, the core-provided icons will be limited to a favicon, an iOS app icon, and a Windows tile icon, leaving .ico support and additional icons to plugins to add.

So, as best I can tell, implementing the feature on my site did nothing. That means the favorite icon I lost moving my site from Windows to Linux still has to be redone. At some point the WP peeps plan to add favorites icon support. 

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Second Life’s Paradise Lost

If you haven’t heard… Paradise Lost is an artistic performance of Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden. It has been made into a movie, machinima. Canary Beck and Harvey Crabsticks are the movers and shakers behind the production and  Forren Ashford is the machinimist.

Huckleberry Hax has a good review of the movie and covers some of the back story. Check it out here: Paradise Lost: The Movie.

The news is there is a premier presentation of the movie this Friday, Sept 18 @ 4PM (presumably SLT) and it releases the 19th. Watching a machinima in Second Life™ may not seem that interesting. But, the production is about more than acting before a camera to present a movie. The use of sets, animation, and audience participation via RLV made it a unique experience in SL. The recording of the production into a movie is no less ambitious. Hax suspects the movie may make a new benchmark for SL machinima.

Basilique’s Performing Arts Company is the organization used to create the production and has its home in the region named Basilique (SLURL). Their blog is here. For Basilique news see: Regional news. For a calendar of events see: Basilique Events Calendar.

4 ways to watch Paradise Lost – The Movie – Limited seating. First come…

Net Neutrality – Sucks More

You’ll get your fill of legal issues today… Net Neutrality is back in the news, not the mainstream news for the low information people. But, in the channels of the activists where more is heard.

Failure To Thrive [ The Gray Child ]
Failure To Thrive [ The Gray Child ]
It seems T-Mobile came up with a great competitive idea. They would provide their users music. The music data download would not count against their data plan. Basically listening to music on T-Mobile was to be free, as in no data cost. Neat, huh? I know that would be really good for me as my car radio died… getting fixed someday. I use iHeart on my phone until then.

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