Second Life: Fast Money

by

It is splashing across the Second Life™ blogosphere that the Lab published an announcement: Faster Credit Processing & Upcoming Changes to Fees. The Lindens think 75% of the SL users taking money out will be able to do so in 2 days, working days.

I Forget Which Side I'm On
I Forget Which Side I’m On

Fees are going up. You can read the announcement to see why, but the info is:

As of April 5, 2016, instead of charging a flat fee of $1 (USD) per transaction, we will charge a fee of 1.5% of the transaction value, with a minimum fee of $3 (USD) and a maximum of $15 (USD). Additionally, the fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase 10¢, from $0.30 (USD) to $0.40 (USD) per transaction.

This is a good thing for most of us. But, see this thread: Anyone received this email from LL?

Project Bento Update Week 9

by

I could make this week’s meeting. But, Inara has an audio recording of the meeting. See: Project Bento User Group update 7 with audio.

The set of bones has changed to meet feedback from SL users. It isn’t all they want, but it is what can be done now.

Lifted [We are more than light]
Lifted [We are more than light]
There was a neck-bone thing that users were on about. The problem is that adding bones within the chain of existing bones breaks legacy compatibility. An alternate option was figured out and added. 

Read more

In the News: Project Sansar

by

Daniel Voyager has an article up pointing to an interview by Ryan Matthew Pierson with Ebbe Altberg, Linden CEO, and Peter Gray, Linden marketing. See: Linden Lab’s Project Sansar and the Future of Virtual Reality. The article is about what is required for Virtual Reality (VR) to go mainstream.

ℜØSE Siabonne #paparazzoted
ℜØSE Siabonne #paparazzoted

The TL:DR is that Second Life did not catch on because the rewards of Second Life didn’t cover the cost of the learning curve, in people’s perception. The article puts that much more convincing worlds.

Ryan covers how Sansar will be different and that it targets the ‘developer/game maker’ rather than the user. But, he never answers the question implied by the first half of the article.

So, interesting, but no great insights.

Danial writes far more about the article from the perspective of a resident of Second Life™ that lives through the times being discussed. (Click Daniel’s name at the top of this article.)

OBDUCTION Getting Near Release

by

If you are a long time reader, you know I came from the Myst gaming community. I am a big fan of Myst Online: Uru Live. Cyan Worlds the maker of Uru has been working on a new game for a couple of years: OBDUCTION.

Obduction Release
Obduction Release

Game Tyrant has an article about their experience with OBDUCTION at the Cyan offices. See: Exclusive: We Played OBDUCTION, the Spiritual Successor to MYST and it is Brilliant. 

Read more

Blog Problems Follow Up

by

Most of the site is cleaned. I am running on all new plugins. Removing others. Everything is only 3 months old or newer. I still have a few to re-install. I’m still trying to figure out which search engines to block. I’m not familiar with European Arabic, and Asian engines.

The software I am using doesn’t organize information as well as it might. Plus timing is fuzzy. But, it is free and has some other features I like, so I’ll keep it.

Today you’ll notice the ads are back. They pay for my hosting. So, deal with them and know I appreciate your patience with them.

I’ve changed over to Google’s ReCAPTCHA. The other company providing Recaptcha was an advertising company and may have been part of the problem with my site. I think it is easier to use. Let me know.