Changes

Second Life: Calling Card Bugs

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Linden Lab has found and is in the process of fixing Calling Card (CC) bugs in Second Life™. Recent work has found some CC problems affecting performance. One fix LL will likely put in is a feature to remove duplicate CC’s.

_Second Life__091
_Second Life__091 by Jo Yardley, on Flickr

Having a CC triggers lookups at login and other times during a secession. With some people having 50k calling cards that puts a heavy load on viewer and server. An older but common tip for improving viewer performance is deleting all your Calling Cards. If you are not using them, there is no point having your viewer doing the work to update CC status for those avatars. 

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Second Life Ban List

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Not too long ago we got a Ban List for our Second Life™ groups. But,  Oz says we have no good user interface for managing the Ban List. OK, that wasn’t a duh moment. He was leading into asking for someone to take on designing a UI for managing the Ban List.

Seasons Event
Seasons Event by My Sister’s Closet SL Blog, on Flickr

So, if you are into User Interface design whip up a manager for ban lists.

In that discussion Profile Notes came up and how they used to be used in conjunction with group lists for handling banned people.

From what I was hearing Oz apparently does not use Profile comments… I do. But, I’m not at all sure I understand what Jessica was talking about when she said they stopped working. Whatever the case is, the Lab will probably being adding a note field to the future ban list manager. But, all this is dependent on what someone designs.

Second Life Group Lists

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You probably don’t know that Second Life group member lists do not fully load for groups with over 5,000 members, unless you manage a large group. And now the Lab will soon be having the servers NOT send the full list to the viewer. This change is a work-around for a problem impacting group chat.

Paint Us like a Group of Your French Girls.
Paint Us like a Group of Your French Girls. by VOIDAR // Ashley Carter, on Flickr

This coming change is NOT related to the new 60-groups limit. That is having no measurable impact on group chat. But, downloading LARGE member lists is creating a problem, apparently whether 1 or 60. 

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Second Life Premium Membership Update

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The lindens posted about 11 AM today that Premium Members will now have a group limit of 60 groups. Regular or free account members will still be limited to 42 accounts, a magical number.

Back to Basic
Back to Basic by Graham Collinson, on Flickr

That is not a big addition. But, it is significant. I just recently went through clearing out groups I don’t often use so I could add others.

What happens if you later downgrade your account from Premium to Free? You keep all the groups you have. If that is 60 groups, you still have 60 groups. But, even if you only have 50, you won’t be able to add new groups until you get below 42. That is a nice feature. Obviously the Lindens were thinking.

The End of Second Life?

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Everything ends. It is just a matter of when. We hear this story of Second Life™ ending all the time. It is not new. Lots of Chicken Little. That SL has not ended, does not mean it won’t. The sky COULD fall. But, I think we will have plenty of warning should the end draw near.

mediterranean girl
Mediterranean girl by Annahyss Resident, on Flickr

I came to Second Life from Myst Online, which has closed and come back a number of times. So, I’m used to games I like closing. Rizom is another one I liked and played for a time. It too closed and came back. Others just closed. 

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Second Life Removing Snapshot-to-Email

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In the Third Party Developers’ meeting Oz Linden mentioned that someone spotted a maintenance version viewer without the ability to send snapshots via email from Second Life. This omission of the feature Snapshot-to-Email from this RC version is deliberate. It will eventually be removed from all Linden and Third Party Viewers.

Blue Note
Blue Note by Marco Pagot, on Flickr

The way the system works, the images are sent TO whoever with the FROM address of the user-sender, at least when the Lab knows the sender’s address. But, the email is being sent from a Second Life server, so they are spoofing the FROM address. This ‘spoofing’ is a common practice of spammers and black-hat crackers. So, the SL servers are getting blocked by numerous ISP’s automated systems as spammers. That is affecting other email services the Lab uses to communicate with users.

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