Second Life

Things about SL

Snowstorm Viewer Progress (208921)

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The Snowstorm team is entering a new sprint. The recent Office Hours (OH) meeting shows concentration on some items that annoy residents. For me the top one is Chat.

Latif Khalifa provides a write up of several considerations for fixing chat. See: Viewer Chat Recommendations. At this point we don’t know how the team will see these recommendations or what priorities they will assign, if any. But, it is an interesting consideration and Esbee liked the write up.

One thing I learned is that there are volume adjusters for each AV in a voice conversation. Mouse over the AV and click the Tool Tip that opens. There is a volume adjust in there. They call these panels Inspectors. One can find the inspectors in several places, not just in Tool Tips.

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Emerald Viewer DEAD!!!

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Updated 10:30 PM PDT – Various revisions and additions that change the tone and meaning of several points previously made.

Today there is a new post on the Emerald blog announcing the end of the Emerald Viewer, a final release version and then the coming blocking of the viewer by Linden Lab.

See: The End (dead link)

It’s over. Bummer.

The current in progress viewer is going to be released. We can see what the team has developed and added. That should be interesting. But, they are hinting that at some future time LL will block Emerald Viewers. We have no idea when that may be or even that it is for sure.

Jessica Lyon posted her resignation from the Emerald team here: My Resignation from Emerald

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Second Life Display Names in Open Beta

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SL Display Names Project
Display Name Setting

Update 2010-09-06: The Display Names Wiki page has been updated and provides load of new information and answers.

Earlier I blogged about Display Names and referred to Gwyneth Llewelyn’s article Identity Crisis! The expected roll out for Display Names is late September 2010. However, Linden Lab just announced a Project Viewer for those wanting to test Display Names.

For me this appears to be a first case test of whether we are dealing with the same ol’ Linden Lab or the new more communicative and sensitive LL. Consider this part of their statement;

After the flood of comments that greeted our announcement of the upcoming Display Names feature, we’re happy to announce that we are now releasing a Project Viewer to help us further test performance and let Residents get a sense for how Display Names would work should they go into production.

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Emerald Viewer 1.5.0.2587 Beta Released

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Emerald Viewer
Emerald Logo

Emerald has a new beta version of their viewer out. There are some interesting items on the opening page of this version. Today the four News & Announcements links contains a item asking for those interested in being an Emerald developer to make contact Jessica Lyon and get involved. There is also a link to a post about the interview by Phaylen Fairchild on Rezzed.tv. See Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues for my take on the interview and links to the 115 minute video. Plus the link to the new code base repository.

You can download the new Emerald Beta Viewer here: Download Link to newest Beta for Windows? They have yet to get the blog moved to the new domain. They are not going to use WordPress for the blog so that slows the move. This means the links are hidden in the forum. 🙁

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Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues – Part 3

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Part 1 – Part 2

Is there an advantage to the Windows 64-bit version over the Windows 32-bit? 64-bit has some performance advantage.

Does Emerald have any commercial interests? There is currently no Ad Sense accounts. Emerald is not currently raising funds. Arabella is currently paying for servers out of her pocket.

What was the point of the data mining project? It was for a private project of Fractured’s to provide a product for SIM owners to assist them in identifying griefers by IP address. It was always separate from Emerald. No data is collected by the Emerald viewer.

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Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues – Part 2

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Part 1 – Part 3

Will Snowstorm affect Emerald? Most definitely. It will affect every viewer. The new SL 2.0 viewer is the product of a software specification contracted out to a third party development team. It is typical of what happens when marketing types or any non-programmer types write a spec and gives it to the egghead geeks to build. Lots is lost in translation. Now the Snowstorm team is racing to fix the viewer and make it into something useful to residents and third party developers. From what I have seen so far, I have some hope.

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