The Lindens have posted on the SL blogrum that the Emerald Viewer will be blocked Wednesday 9/8. See their post here: Emerald Viewer to be Blocked From Second Life

Most importantly it appears the Lab may close the accounts of those that attempt to circumvent the block.

Please be aware that attempting to circumvent our blocking to access Second Life with a banned Viewer is a violation of the Policy on Third-Party Viewers and may result in the loss of one’s account.

A couple of days ago Emerald Viewer 2600 was released. This viewer is compiled post team lockout. I commented on the viewer and the lockout in the post Emerald Viewer DEAD!!!. This viewer appears to somewhat be a direct taunt of Linden Lab.

According to an audio post on YouTube.com and reported by Alphaville Herald (See Emerald Viewer DEAD!!! For links) this viewer version has the ability to spoof its version and ID. There is in fact a debug setting that appears to allow one to do that.

Updated 10:30 PM PDT – Various revisions and additions that change the tone and meaning of several points previously made.

Today there is a new post on the Emerald blog announcing the end of the Emerald Viewer, a final release version and then the coming blocking of the viewer by Linden Lab.

See: The End (dead link)

It’s over. Bummer.

The current in progress viewer is going to be released. We can see what the team has developed and added. That should be interesting. But, they are hinting that at some future time LL will block Emerald Viewers. We have no idea when that may be or even that it is for sure.

Jessica Lyon posted her resignation from the Emerald team here: My Resignation from Emerald

Emerald Logo

Emerald has a new beta version of their viewer out. There are some interesting items on the opening page of this version. Today the four News & Announcements links contains a item asking for those interested in being an Emerald developer to make contact Jessica Lyon and get involved. There is also a link to a post about the interview by Phaylen Fairchild on Rezzed.tv. See Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues for my take on the interview and links to the 115 minute video. Plus the link to the new code base repository.

You can download the new Emerald Beta Viewer here: Download Link to newest Beta for Windows? They have yet to get the blog moved to the new domain. They are not going to use WordPress for the blog so that slows the move. This means the links are hidden in the forum.

Part 1 – Part 2

Is there an advantage to the Windows 64-bit version over the Windows 32-bit? 64-bit has some performance advantage.

Does Emerald have any commercial interests? There is currently no Ad Sense accounts. Emerald is not currently raising funds. Arabella is currently paying for servers out of her pocket.

What was the point of the data mining project? It was for a private project of Fractured’s to provide a product for SIM owners to assist them in identifying griefers by IP address. It was always separate from Emerald. No data is collected by the Emerald viewer.

Part 1 – Part 3

Will Snowstorm affect Emerald? Most definitely. It will affect every viewer. The new SL 2.0 viewer is the product of a software specification contracted out to a third party development team. It is typical of what happens when marketing types or any non-programmer types write a spec and gives it to the egghead geeks to build. Lots is lost in translation. Now the Snowstorm team is racing to fix the viewer and make it into something useful to residents and third party developers. From what I have seen so far, I have some hope.

Part 2 – Part 3

New World Notes has an article about another interview with Jessica and Arabella on Rezzed.tv. See Emerald Developers (Attempt to) Answer Your Questions on Rezzed TV on New World Notes. This video runs 115 minutes. The direct link to the video on Rezzed.tv: Rezzed.TV Presents Emerald: Your Questions, Answered

A new release of the beta Emerald Viewer is out. I’ll be dusting off my Alt and trying it later today. It appears to be based on the Snowglobe 1.5 code base. They note that MOAP (Media On A Prim) does NOT work in this version.

The current official forum link is here: ! Emerald Beta 2573 Links The new official web site still shows Emerald Viewer  1.23.5.1636-1 as the main Emerald Viewer.

There appears to be no blog yet. I suspect the team is pretty busy right now. Their Third Party Viewer (TPV) listing has not been restored yet. That may take some time. Linden Lab is not blocking the viewer and you are allowed to use it.

New Forum

You can use your ID and password from Modular Systems’ forum to login at EmeraldViewer.net’s forum. It is probably a very good idea to change your password. When doing that realize that while the page says 6 or more characters are required, it is actually 8 or more.