Get Your Google+ Invite

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The general knowledge is that there are no invites to Google+ available. ReadWriteWeb.com is saying differently. There is a way to invite people with Gmail addresses into Google+. Marshall Kirkpatrick invited 500 people in 20 minutes. Wow! So, how does one do it? It seems you share something with someone by their email address. There is … Read more

OpenSim Development

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Today the Open Simulator group announced the formation of Overte Foundation, a 501c(3) entity that allows tax free donations from the USA. The foundation will hold the rights to the code that makes up the simulator, the server side of many virtual worlds. It appears the main purpose is to clean up licensing issues and head off future problems. But, what does this do for the OpenSim user? To understand we need to know a bit about the Open Simulator Project and what is changing.

One change is a uniform license is being created for those contributing code to the project labeled; Contributor’s License Agreement (CLA). Quoting the Foundation, “Under this agreement, each OpenSimulator developer, including the core developers, will continue to retain copyright over their code but will also grant an explicit copyright license over their contributions to the Overte Foundation.”

The current licensing is BSD, which does not require an author to state they have all necessary rights to contribute code to the Open Simulator Project. The CLA changes that. Nor does BSD grant a right to distribute the code to an explicit entity. The new licensing will deal with that too.

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The Phoenix-Firestorm Survey

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The Phoenix hour is a bi-weekly show facilitated by Phaylen Fairchild (the nosey heifer – hilarious inside joke – see 52:00±). In the video Jessica Lyon is speaking for the Firestorm/Phoenix team. This week’s meeting is mostly about the recent survey on five features in the viewer, which the Firestorm team ran. The following is a summary of the meeting. The times are HH:MM:SS or just MM:SS and they are approximate. The words here are my paraphrasing of the video not a transcript. So, my take may be different than yours was or would be or than what Jessica intended. Simply it is what I took from what they were saying.

The Phoenix Hour

If you watch the video be warned that while the video starts at 00:00:00 the sound failed until about time mark 07:00±. So, you can skip into the video without missing anything. Also, the video is mostly just talking heads. So, if you listen without watching, you won’t miss anything. The only URL presented I give as a link below.

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Google+

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This is a new social networking idea. With something like 90% of Facebook users unhappy with Facebook it is not surprising that someone is going to try and compete with Facebook. Google is going for it. For some time rumors have been that Google Circles would be an attempt to create a new social network. Now Google+ appears and it looks like it will be the project rumored to be Google Circles.

Google+

Google+ is in limited Beta, field testing as is said on the web site. Google+

If you take the interactive tour, you’ll see a menu item labeled Circles. As Google puts it, social networks are about sharing. The trick here, as Anthony Wiener found out, is sharing with just the ones you want. Circles allow one to easily create and control their groups. The interface is drag and drop. It makes Facebook’s processes look positively ancient. Drag a person to a circle certainly beats drop down menus.

I know from playing Facebook games where you must recruit people to advance that managing friends  gets tedious. Their posts and likes and stuff begin to clutter the wall so that it is hard to see what my friends are doing. Figuring out how to deal with all this is about as much fun as learning to use a new SL viewer.

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Deleting Facebook Accounts

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You may have noticed that it is nearly impossible to delete a Facebook account. Some believe it is impossible. However, on the ReadWriteWeb.com blog they have the steps needed to backup your profile and delete it. See: How to (Actually) Delete Your Facebook Account There are other ways. As one person has said, just post … Read more

#SL Server Updates Week 26

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Servers - Image by: dumbledad @ Flickr

Today one of the long pending updates has finally rolled out to the main grid. With any luck, it will work fine and a roll back can be avoided. So, what is in this new roll out?

Mono2

The big gun in this roll out is Mono2. Kelly Linden is generally blamed for the Mono2 Update… well… attributed is probably a better word. But, since no good deed goes unpunished… we can thank him while gathering tar and features. Whatever your feelings on Mono2, it has been a long time coming. Today it was rolled out to the main grid.

Mono2 is an update to the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) system. The original language is one created by Linden Lab for use in Second Life (SL). Scripts are used by residents to make things like doors open and teleports teleport. Scripts are written in a language. Many of you will have heard of JavaScript, which is used widely with web pages. LSL is a somewhat JavaScript like language used exclusively in Second Life with a dialect used in OpenSim (OSSL). I suppose one could say the relationship between JavaScript and LSL is a bit like English and Spanish being Latin based languages. Your ability to speak one does not allow you to speak the other, but any other Latin based language will be a bit easier to learn.

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