Virtual World News

Second Life Translators Dying

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Many if not most Second Live Viewers have automatic language translation features. Those translators depend on Google’s translation services. The viewers use a Google API (Application Programming Interface – basically a protocol for asking a question and getting an answer). Google has announced that as of December 2011 the service will be turned off. (Reference) Google’s translation page will remain. But, the door to the service which SL viewers use will close.

Effective immediately, the service is being ‘throttled’. A limit is set on the number of requests an application can make per day.

Why?

Google sited their reason for closing the API part of their translation service as abuse. It seems it was too popular. As it was a free service the ‘abusive’ load on Google servers was a financial drain.

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The SL World is About to Change

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Yesterday we got word that by the end of the month we will have the time table for mesh release. Along with mesh we have other features that will arrive too. Some we know about. Others we have only had hints of. But, there are significant changes coming to Second Life.

Changing Second Life
Changing Worlds - By Paul J Everett @ Flickr

I’ve told you about the coming changes I’ve discovered over the past weeks. I doubt I’ve discovered them all. The Linden’s in the various teams hint at other coming changes and new features. We obviously are only being told about the changes the Lab feels will directly affect merchants or the economy.

The Big Change

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Photobucket Down

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Photobucket has been down a couple of days now. Apparently it was down a couple of weeks ago. E-Bay users are pissed. Tinypic is also down and I understand it is owned by Photobucket. Photobucket went down some time last night. It’s been down all day so far.

You can see which pictures I host in my blog and which I host from Photobucket. I may have to rethink where I host images.

What happened is unknown. I know the notices say maintenance. But, when I noticed that Photobucket was down there were no ‘maintenance’ notices. I got 404’s or time outs. That is not the behavior of an orderly maintenance shutdown. All we can do is speculate.

Yay! I came back up! 4/13 about 5:30 PM PST.

Burn2 – What are we doing?

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In July 2010 Phillip Linden (Phillip Rosedale – CEO Linden Lab) announced that the Burning Man celebration in SL would be handled by a resident run group rather than Linden Lab. Ok. Now 6 months later I get news that I can visit Burn 2. A friends LM sent to Deep Hole and I didn’t believe that was the main Burn 2 location. So, I chase down a Landmark to get me there, which is not the easiest of tasks, thanks to the broken search in series 2 viewers. You can find it in Destinations… grumble gumble… But, my friend’s link was the right one.

The Burn 2: Burnal Equinox ends at 10 PM March 27, 2011.

 

Burn 2: Burnal Equinox
Burn 2: Burnal Equinox

This is not the SL Burn event you are used to. It was a frustrating trip for me. Part of that frustration was caused by me. Using the Firestorm Preview #2 (a pre-alpha version viewer) was probably not a good idea… taking pictures was a nightmare. That takes 15 to 60 seconds and drives the viewer into ‘Not Responding.’ Also I cannot fly in the region (not a viewer issue, fly is off in the region). Grrrr. But it isn’t that bad because the area is small and doesn’t take that long to walk through. The FS Preview #2 gave me lots of problems.

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