Linden Lab pours MILLIONS into Second Life

Ebbe Linden has posted in the SL Forum. The post is titled Celebrating 14 Years of SL with Investments in Its Future. In it, he says they have budgeted US$ Millions for the coming year, which is awesome.

Cerridwens Cauldron_007

Cerridwens Cauldron_007 (URL)

He tells us about some of the coming changes to Second Life. Some we know about, others are new news.

One change is moving SL to the cloud. I have heard no details. So, exactly what this means is currently speculation. My speculation is this should significantly drop the cost of running the system. I imagine an empty region could be spun down and then only spun up as needed. Would this reduce land cost? It might.  Continue reading

Second Life in the News 2016 Week 18

Motherboard’s Why SL is still a Thing

(Link) Emanuel Maiberg, author, thinks Second Life is a shabby World of Warcraft… Really!?!

WoW 2015?

WoW 2015?

I have to wonder what part of SL Emanuel has been looking at…

On the beach...

On the beach…

The article points out several good reasons for SL having survived. Fair enough overall.

Quote: “Indeed, the most surprising thing about Second Life is not that it’s still a thing, but that 13 years after its inception, it is still way ahead of its time.Continue reading

Second Life in the NEWS 2016-W17#2

♥

Seems there are a bunch of articles referring to Second Life™ and Project Sansar this week. The Australian in their LIFE section has an article titled Welcome to the virtual reality social revolution.

Seems a fair enough view of SL and the image used is recent.

As I write this there are only a couple of comments. If all the comments were like the first, I would conclude the Australians are far more civil than Americans.

ODD: Intel Developers to use Second Life?

In my reading I came across this article on the Intel Developer site: Unity Tip: Using Second Life As A 3D Modeling Package.

Quoting:

You may need to use 3D modeling to create objects for your project but do not have the technical experience yet to do so, or find that your package of choice does not provide the feature that you need (for example, creating spheres in SketchUp is very difficult).  There is an alternative, user-friendly solution though.  You can create your objects in the online virtual reality world Second Life

I think that is pretty interesting…

Even more interesting is they promote the Firestorm Viewer as the viewer of choice. Their reason for recommending Firestorm is the Collada export feature found in Firestorm.

The article provides a tutorial on how to export 3D items from Second Life™ using the Firestorm viewer.

Second Life in the News Week 3

Annie Gaus, a reporter for the San Francisco Business Times has written In virtual reality, Second Life prepares for its second act. Annie interviews Ebbe Altberg. Starting with Second Life as a virtual world and moving into talk about Project Sansar.

Nothing new here to those following Sansar in the SL Blogosphere. But, it is a nice article.

Xiaoyu

Xiaoyu

Second Life in the News

Second Life™ is in the news again. It is mentioned in an article about pedophilia. So, is Morrowind, Elder Scrolls. It isn’t what you think. The article is about how those aware of their problem are sublimating (especially in psychoanalytic theory) divert or modify (an instinctual impulse) into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity) and controlling their desire using virtual worlds.

{ Help! I'm not really Insane! } for Style Kingdom Mag

{ Help! I’m not really Insane! } for Style Kingdom Mag

A Dr. Seto points out that “prosocial” pedophiles—ones who experience empathy for children or shy away from harmful sexual behavior—more often than not don’t know where to turn for help.

Historically we have been down this road with other differences thought of as illnesses. Homosexual preference is not a disease or mental illness. Their gender identity is different. We have learned a lot about what shapes gender identity.  Continue reading

Second Life in the NEWS – Week 52

Second Life™ made it in the news this week, again. This time at WIRED in an article titled: 5 Companies You Thought Were Doomed But Are Actually Fine (For Now). The title explains most of the story. The companies are; Dropbox, Pandora, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Second Life.

Simple Things

Simple Things

There is nothing in the story we don’t already know. Nor do I think it will inspire anyone to come check out Second Life. But, its press… and positive…