Google+ Suspends Avatar Accounts

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Well, Google may be hung up on having real names and addresses so they can send advertising. Opensource Obscure’s account was just suspended. I understand he has appealed.

Tateru Nino has written a good article on what is happening. See: Google seemingly split on pseudonymous Google+ accounts and Google Profiles – It’s okay until it isn’t. She makes many good points in the article.

Opensource's Flickr Page

 What Next?

There are social networks forming for gaming communities. So, we may have avatars registering with those. This would mean a movement away from Facebook and Google+.

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Firestorm Beta 2.5.2 (16922) Release Review

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A new Firestorm version is out. Apple, Linux, and Windows versions are available. This is the big step up in Third Party Viewers for builders. The development team has added the build tools. I think it was the lack of this feature most holding Firestorm back. Following is my experience with the new Firestorm.

Firestorm Viewer Beta 2

Download

Tuesday and Wednesday the download process was very slow. I am guessing lots of people are finally making the change over to a V2 type viewer. I certainly see patience with anti-V2 people running out in the support groups. Not Firestorm’s support people. They are great. But, the Firestorm users that chime into help other Firestorm users are getting an edge. After they made the change and survived.

May be I’ll make a T-shirt that says I survived the change… ummm… maybe I could word that better.

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New Avatars and Cars

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Linden Lab has just added a new flock of non-human avatars to SL. See: July Update

New Second Life Robot Avatars
New Second Life Vehicles
New Second Life Animal Avatars

These avatars and vehicles are in your Library folder in your inventory, now. They will soon appear in the Basic Mode viewer.

Chat Lag

They Lindens are saying chat lag has been greatly reduced. I haven’t heard of any new technical details since my last update on the subject. So, I’m assuming it is just old news making it to the forum.

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Hair Fair 2011

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No server updates last week. No Mesh meeting this week. So, I went down to the Hair Fair. That was an expensive adventure. But, the prices are amazing and most vendors are contributing 50% of the cost to Wigs for Kids, a worthy cause. Stop by and donate even if you don’t buy anything.

Hair Fair 2011

Getting In

The Hair Fair is popular. Lots of people are going. Especially as they learn about the prices. So, getting in can be a problem, lots of server full messages. There is a way around that problem. Open the World Map and search for Iridium. You’ll see four regions that are obviously related; Osmium, Rhodium, Iridium, and Platinum. Find one of those areas with the fewest people and TP in there.  Any area with less than 45 people will probably let you in.

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Google+ Picasa and Games

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A recent article tells about Google+ users getting unlimited image storage on Google’s Picasa. See: Thanks to Google Plus, Picasa Gets Unlimited Storage for Photos & Videos, Also Better Tagging. I have used Picasa and it is pretty nice. Most of my use there has been for work. I may add it to my play accounts. … Read more

Second Life Server Update Week 26

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This week saw the Mono2 update roll out to the main grid. This update has cycled through the testing process for weeks. Many were looking forward to its roll. Things did not go as well as expected. The problem, new fixes and coming fixes are discussed below.

The Seljuks Empire

Homestead Problems

The Mono2 roll out revealed a structural problem in the testing cycle. The percent of homestead regions in the release channels was too small to catch a problem in this upgrade. Hours after the Tuesday roll out the Lindens knew they had a problem. By noon Tuesday they knew the problem was big. None of the homestead regions were working well. By Wednesday morning they realized the scope of the problem.

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