Nalates' Things & Stuff

Second Life Podcasters Dodge One

2015/04/11 by Nalates Urriah

If you love Drax’s Radio Hour, you’ll be glad to know he isn’t going to be sued off the net. Prior to events this week that was a distinct possibility. Unlikely because he isn’t making big money from his podcasts, but very possible.

So, what is the deal? A patent granted by the US Patent & Trademark Office to a company named Personal Audio, LLC muddied the waters on what those of us like Drax could do with podcasting. They held the patent to podcasting. Thus if you distributed a podcast, you were required to have their (the patent holder’s) permission, which usually means you pay them a royalty. If you did not have their permission to use their Intellectual Property, you could be sued. Oh, what fun.

Second Life News Week 15

2015/04/11 by Nalates Urriah

This Friday (4/10) there was a Third Party Developers’ User Group (TPD UG)meeting. We have some news about Second Life™ from the meeting. The scheduled 60 minute meeting ran a little over 30 minutes.

Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM)

Brooke Linden opened the meeting as Oz Linden seemed to have poofed. Brooke is telling us that they have started deploying parts of the Viewer Managed Marketplace server side. They hope to have a couple of parts rolled out later in the month. Then they can start what I’ll call an open beta. I take it this means it will be moving from the Preview/Beta Grid to the main grid.

Meeting Schedule

Oz was suffering a bad throat and sounded horrible. So, it is no surprise the meeting was short.

The TPD UG meetings are normally every other Friday. Oz is planning to be taking some Fridays off. So, that regularity is going to be upset. Some meetings will occur very other Friday but some may be three weeks apart rather than two. This will mean, I think, Fridays off in place of a longer vacation period. It’s his choice.

Second Life: Firestorm Viewer Release News

2015/04/11 by Nalates Urriah

As of Friday Jessica was planning to put a release out to their current preview group. She was writing an invitation to ask more people into the preview group or maybe she meant she is inviting more people to a larger secondary preview group. It sounds like they will stage testing, so multiple groups may help. So, the viewer will soon go out to the first with the current preview group then, if things go well, a week later with the larger group.

~Big Girls Cry~ by Luaflor Moo, on Flickr

You can see the invitation here: WANTED: Brave Early Adopters and Testers… This request makes it clear this will be a second group different than their beta testers.

Second Life: How to Fix New Login Problems

2015/04/11 by Nalates Urriah

In general people having a problem logging in or staying logged in have connection problems. But we have a new problem. It seems AISv3 removed the LIMIT on how many items you can have in a folder. Apparently any limit has not been enforced for some time. So, we are starting to see some inventories accumulate enough items to trigger a problem.

As things are now a big flat inventory with thousands of items in a single folder, especially the root folder, is a problem. How fast the computer, network, and region are determines when the problem appears. I don’t know for sure, but logging into an empty region should give one a better chance of getting around the login problem. Hopefully they can stay on long enough to move items into folders.

Second Life: Viewer Updates Week 15

2015/04/10 by Nalates Urriah

This week we got some new viewers and updates to existing ones.

Main Viewer

SL Main/Default Viewer: 3.7.26.299635 – Appeared: 3/06 – Adds the Avatar Hover Height Slider.

Winds of Change by Emma Deelight, on Flickr

RC & Project Viewers

RC Maintenance Viewer version 3.7.27.300636 – Appeared: 4/8 – Long list of fixes – This viewer got an update from its previous 3.7.27.300323. It has performance fixes that make using it very nice to use.

Second Life: Machinimatrix AvaStar 1.4-5 Released

2015/04/10 by Nalates Urriah

April 9 – Machinimatrix updated AvaStar. The announcement is here: Avastar 1.4-5.

AvaStar now has the ability to use custom shape keys. This doesn’t mean the shape keys can be loaded into Second Life™. It does mean you can use them to speed your design while working in Blender.

As the video shows, (if you clicked through) you need both AvaStar and Sparkels installed to use the shape keys feature.

Gaia doesn’t really explain the work flow one would use with Shape keys. I expect there will eventually be a video explaining that process. However, training videos from Machinimatrix now tend to be in the form of retail training courses. The basic overall-this-what-this-does-videos are still free. But, the detailed how-to-videos are sold as training courses.