General News – Page 89 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Bits and Pieces 2013-30

2013/07/25 by Nalates Urriah

Ciaran Laval has a post about the 50% discount for educational groups coming back. See: Educational And Non-Profit Ventures See The Return Of The 50% Discount. The original Linden announcement is here: Updated Pricing for Educational and Nonprofit Institutions.

This is probably a good thing. But it is also probably a bit late.

A number of people think the cost of a region is too high. But, that is in the eye of the buyer. I was over on Lost Paradise today looking at Ae’gura. There were 6 users on in the last 24 hours and 17 over the last 7 days. At the same there were 50,000+ concurrent users logged into Second Life™.

Lost Paradise rents regions for US$40/month, the Lab $300±. For daily possible visitors in a day that is $6.67 per user in LP and $0.006 per user in SL. If you are doing business, SL is way cheaper. I know that is not a accurate cost per visitor comparison, but the cost ratio per visitor is accurate.

For educational groups that tend to bring their own students, a discount seems to be reasonable thing that should help everyone.

Hypergrid Business has articles this week on AviWorlds going offline and a how to tell when your grid is about to fold. Hmmmmm…

Avastar 1.0 Released

2013/07/21 by Nalates Urriah

Gaia Clary has a new release of Avastar out. This trailer promoting it was released Saturday July 20^th. The 1.0 release number should not be the significant problem it is with most other software. I’ve been using the release candidate builds and think the software even in pre1.0 releases is has been pretty solid.

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You can get more details about Avastar 1.0 on Gaia’s site: Machinimatrix.org. There is a list of improvements (14) and highlights (13). There is a known bug that has to do with animating the aSpine bone… I’m going to have to look for this problem, as I haven’t noticed it. But, I don’t recall attempting to animate the aSpine bone.

I will have to wait until I’m home sometime Monday to get my copy of Avastar 1.0. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

I’ll also be downloading Blender 2.68, which was released Thursday July 18^th. This is the version Gaia used for testing Avastar 1.0. Less testing has been done with other Blender versions. Gaia believes Avastar 1.0 should work well with Blender versions 2.64 to 2.68.

Note: This is NOT a paid promo. I purchased my own copy of Avastar (US$22).

Second Life Most Popular Regions

2013/07/17 by Nalates Urriah

One of my readers asked about where I got the list of top 50 regions in Second Life™. Fortunately they included a link to what they were asking about, because I was like, OMG! I did that? Well, as the picture shows I got the list from Hamlet over at New World Notes. I didn’t do it.

Here is Hamlet’s latest list: Top 50 Popular Second Life Sims. This is from August 2012. Hamlet gets it from Metaverse Business.

I was wondering if the list is available online. It does not seem to be. I suspect it is part of a commercial subscription service they may offer.

Interesting news About Linden Lab

2013/07/112013/07/10 by Nalates Urriah

In my reading I came across: Second Life Maker Linden Lab Buys Desura for Games Distribution, Plans to Keep It Open.

Desura is not a games maker itself but provides all other services around them. Specifically, users can buy and play games, get free access to mods and add-ons, use the platform to distribute their own games if they’re developers, and use the platform to create a social layer around games for communicating with other players.

Interesting…

Some Stats 2013-28

2013/07/08 by Nalates Urriah

On Plurk I noticed Hamlet’s article: New SL User Retention is 20% (Wha?) I mentioned that stat in one of my ‘Rod Interview’ articles. Rod had said of the 400,000 new sign ups to SL each month 20% stay longer than 30 days.

Stats - Do they Work? — Stats – Do they Work?

Hamlet was thinking about that and wondering about the numbers. Hamlet had thought about past numbers and remembered that previous monthly sign ins was in the range of 500,000+. If there are 1,000,000 sign ins per month now and 400,000 of them are new sign ups each month, Then that means SL has only grown to 600,000 over a number of years. How can 20% stay and not drive up the sign in count? That should add 80,000 users per month.

And Yet Another Interview with Rod Humble 2013-27

2013/07/06 by Nalates Urriah

These just keep popping up. Ciaran Level in Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on Second Life’s Tween Years links to the article on AllThingsD: Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on Second Life’s Tween Years (Q&A).

Also Jo Yardley has an article, up about the same interview: Oculus Rift in Second Life goes public late summer!

Again Rod comments on Second Life’s performance and how it has been a prime concern. Rod says that this year he believes he will be able to say, “Hey, performance is good.” I definitely will go with ‘better.’ But, I’m going to have see more before I’ll say ‘good.’ I also suspect it is going to be ‘good’ for SL.