Second Life Bits of News 2015 Week 11 TPD

Avatar Layer Limits

The Lindens are back on this project. The idea is that the current limits we have will change. As it is now we can wear up to 5 items on each of 12 attachment points – 60 items. The Lindens are changing that so, that you can wear 60 items (layers) any where you want.

This is going to really help with tattoos and alpha layers.

"1920s
1920s Berlin: Talking Shop by Marion Beresford, on Flickr

This change will affect viewers and servers. Viewers don’t have to update to be compatible with the changed servers, but that would restrict that viewer’s users.

The avatar bake engine is going to be updated to enforce the 60 item limit.

No projected ETA.

Read more

Ebbe Linden & Second Life in Education

Ebbe Linden (Altberg) gave the opening speech at Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) earlier this year. (Reference) They have videos available.

Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable 12 March 2015
Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable 12 March 2015 by Sheila Yoshikawa, on Flickr

On March 21, 2015 Time: 9:00 – 10:50 a.m. in the Second Life Main Auditorium (SLURL) a panel of people from Second Life will be discussing and answering questions in Second Life about “…how NonProfit Commons has contributed to significant dialogue around the uses of virtual worlds like Second Life. The panelists will discuss how they have changed and grown, as well as the different opportunities and moments that have distinguished the group and the manner in which they promote and spotlight best practices.” (quoted from the VWBPE site) 

Read more

Second Life Music Videos

Jo Yardley has written: Music videos shot in Second Life and why we need more of them. She is on about promoting the nicer side of Second Life. I agree with her. Drax is into such promotion too. His radio show (DraxFiles.com) and World Builders videos are evidence of his passion for the subject.

Jo thinks music videos have the possibility of going viral and thus are a good way to get a positive impression of Second Life out to the world. That is certainly a possibility. But the chances of any video going viral is slim.

There is a lot of amazing stuff out showing Second Life in positive ways. But, few people see it. The problem is getting the positive example into people’s faces. Think about that. What do I need to do to get my “information” in front of you and have you look at it? Remember. I don’t know you, your phone number, address, or email.

A music video that goes viral reaches a few million people. Most music videos do well to break 100,000 views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf7Ie6PMZJk

The above video has just under 76,000 and was uploaded in 2009. 

Read more

Bits of Second Life 2015 Week 11

Scoop.it Tutorial

Scoop.it has links to another interesting tutorial. This one is about working with green screen… or I would say masking and cutting your avatar out of the background.

Polly
Polly by Kaelyn Alecto, on Flickr

Nimil Blackflag wrote the tutorial and made the images. This is basically an example of how to use the Background Eraser and setup the image so it works amazingly well. It is simple, fast, and near perfect. But, it does require Photoshop.

See: so you want to remove a green screen?

Best Malware Research Blogs

I think sooner or later everyone gets bitten. CyberWarZone.com has an article up listing the best sites for researching malware and finding ways to get it out.

See: Malware Research Blogs 

Read more

Bits and Pieces of Second Life 2015 Week 10

MOV Files to HTML5

As the Second Life Viewer moves toward using CEF (Chrome Embedded Framework) the use of HTML5 video becomes more important. Fortunately there is a free program that converts formats.

See: How to Convert MOV to HTML5 Video?

Journey is'nt over yet
Journey is’nt over yet by Sunnygeorge, on Flickr

Boxes

Lindal Kidd has a tutorial up on how to use boxes… yes, those prim cube things. See: Boxes

If you are wondering WHY? … Well, her blog is subtitled: Notes From Second Life – Advice for the New Avatar.  She also spends a lot of time helping people in the SL Forum. So, she meets lots of new SL users. So, I suspect she will also use this tutorial as a link-to when answering pleas for help.

This will be a handy link to give to noobies.

Read more