Month: July 2011

Duché de Coeur’s 2nd Annual Music and Arts Festival

Posted on by Inara Pey
Languedoc Coeur

This weekend, from Friday 29th through 31st July, the Duché de Coeur’s Academies Royal de Musique and Peinture will be holding their second annual music and arts festival in Second Life.

The festival will feature more than 20 artists during the course of the weekend, performing in a number of venues that showcase the Duchy’s beautiful sims. Artists attending the event include:

  • Champagne Rain
  • Waltkeys Faith
  • Miles Eleventhauer
  • SaraMarie Philly
  • Yuki Hutchinson
  • Tip Corbett
  • Miriam Forsythe
  • Trowser Boa

As well as music, the festival will feature dance and act as a preview of the Academies’ upcoming season of events (commencing September 17th), including the grand opening of the Duche de Coeur’s own art gallery, featuring the works of some of SL’s most talented artists.

The festival kicks-off at 1:00pm SLT on the 29th July, at Isla Pequena, Aquitaine Coeur Sud (Surl).

Schedule of Events (all times SLT)

Friday 29th

Saturday 30th July

Sunday 31st July

Travel between the venues can be facilitated via the Surls above, or if you prefer to travel in keeping with the theme of the Duchy, using the available horse-drawn carriages, which also include options for touring select resident homes during the festival and traveling to merchant locations offering freebies.

About Duché de Coeur

Duché de Coeur is a fictitious area of France that comprises the real life regions of Provence, Languedoc, Aquitaine, and Poitou, Normandie, Touraine, and Franche-Comté.  It is an accurate depiction of a world of friendship and romance as it might have been around the Age of Enlightenment of some 225 years ago, in an idealistic world where all classes live together in harmony. Further information on Duché de Coeur can be obtained from Bedrich Panacek or SkyeRyder Varriale.

“Social” web profiles live today

Posted on by Inara Pey

At the start of July, I reported on the development of the new “social” web profiles. Linden Lab have confirmed that the new profiles will be officially live from later today.

In typical LL form, the news was not broken via the LL website – although we may yet get an update there at soe point – but rather via the LL Twitter feed, @my_secondlife:

The new web profiles bring a number of interesting features to your profile pages at http://my.secondlife.com, including a Feed capability that allows you (and those to whom you allow) to make comments on your “Feed” page & the home page of your profile.

This system is interesting, but not without its limitations at present. One of these is that in order to see someone else’s comments made to their own profile, you need to Friend them first. This means that any content creators using their Feed to make product announcements, etc., are going to be getting a lot of Friendship offers – which could be irritating in the first pass, and lessen the overall impact of the service. That said, Fredrik Bjork (Fredrik Linden) has indicated that features that will allow “non-user profiles” for stores, etc., will be added in time.

One thing that has been added since I first looked at these features is Twitter integration: if you have a Twitter account, you can make a comment on your Profile feed and have it appear on Twitter. Similar integration with Plurk has been promised.

I’m still not totally convinced as to how these new features will be received by users; I rather suspect that those of us already using the likes of Twitter are probably not going to be greatly influenced by the initial offerings – and may not even be tempted away at all, for reasons Tateru Nino explains very succinctly.

Nevertheless, keep an eye on your web profile and see what you think when the new options are live.

ADDENDUM – 26th July

  1. For those wishing to opt-out of the new FEED option of web profiles, you can now set your FEED privacy to NOBODY – meaning no-one can see your feed or comment on it. Go to http://my.secondlife.com/first.last  – log-in if required, then select SETTINGS on the left of the window, then click the PRIVACY tab and set FEED to NOBODY in the drop-down list of options.
  2. Plurk integration is now available.

Google’s bosses want G+ to “replicate real life”

Posted on by Inara Pey

As Botgirl Questi reports, the reason things have been so topsy-turvy on Google+ (some pseudonymous accounts being suspended then being reinstated; others being suspended and remaining so, others apparently being removed), appears to have gained some clarification.

It appears, to precis, that Google wants G+ to mimic how “ordinary people” interact in the real world.

Wow.

So innovation has now become a matter of mimicking, rather than enhancing or actually, well, being innovative. Givem all the possible options Google could opt to take when looking at building a genuinely innovative, progressive and encompassing social platform, the one that claim to have opted for seems to be little more than a wimp-out.

Obviously, there are clear reasons for this – as Tateru Nino commented the other day – in relation to capturing those who have been engaged in Facebook. This is also the possibility that Google’s conservative approach is because most people are, well, conservative, when it comes to making friends in RL. But in taking this approach, the fact is that Google is hardly likely to set the world alight – and they may actually be aware of this, hence the current flip-flopping over the matter of pseudonymity we’re currently seeing in terms of some accounts being reinstated as the beta progresses.

Even so, one cannot help but think that in taking up this stance, Google are potentially leaving a very large opportunity open for someone else to take-up.

Botgirl Questi closes her post with a quote from Marshall McLuhan regarding looking back at the future. I’d like to add my own to it, this one from Jim Steinman and made famous by one Marvin Lee Aday. It may not be as illustrious as the quote from McLuhan, but it still tends to sum Google’s position up:

Objects in the rear-view mirror may appear closer than they are.

Virtual conference for disability rights

Posted on by Inara Pey

Virtual Ability, the first winner of the Linden Prize in 2009, will be holding the International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference in Second Life this weekend (July 23-24th). The aim of the international conference is to “begin to explore legal protections around the world for persons with disabilities.”

Panels will discuss local legislation that supports the rights of persons with disabilities, with panelists attending from Australia, Belgium, Costa Rica, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the US and the UK, and include:

  • Scott Gill, Executive Director of Access 2 independence, a Center for Independent Living in Iowa, US, who will be discussing the independence movement
  • Simon Walsh, from the UK; who will be comparing the US ADA legislation with the UK’s DDA
  • Sister Abeyante a Salvatorian Sister, who will be discussing advocacy for disability (civil and human) rights
  • Roberta Walker Kilkenny, a college instructor; who will be making a presentation on significance of the UN Convention.

Other organisations attending the event include: the National Service Inclusion Project and the Job Accommodation Network.

Commenting on the conference, Alice Krueger, president of Virtual Ability, Inc., stated: “It is a great pleasure to host so many wonderful speakers. Our audience will gain information about the extent of the issues facing people with disabilities, and the potentials for solutions to barriers.”

Further Information

LL announce mesh on the Main grid

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab have issued a further mesh update, detailing the Mesh Upload status page is now available on Main grid user dashboards.

As I reported a week ago, the new status page can be located by logging-in to your dashboard at www.secondlife.com. When your dashboard is displayed, click on ACCOUNT in the menu at the top left and then Mesh Upload Status.

Mesh Upload Status page

For an overview on getting yourself certified to upload mesh, see my earlier post on the subject.

Mesh roll-out to commence “in days”

Posted on by Inara Pey

Oz Linden has indicated that Linden Lab will start rolling out the code to support mesh on the Main grind “in days rather than weeks”.

To help prepare the way, the Lab have also issued a new page on the wiki for those wishing to help with the roll-out. Among things worth noting:

  • Testing applies to users owning FULL private sims  – No Homesteads or Openspaces. In addition, some sandboxes will be set-up for mesh testing
  • Uploaded objects may be destroyed or broken permanently, and may no longer work after the full mesh deploy in August
  • If you move rezzed mesh objects from a new mesh-enabled version to a sim running the current release version, they may be destroyed or broken permanently – and this includes vehicles and attachments
  • During this phase of the rollout, LL may alter the Prim count for mesh objects and cause objects to be returned to inventory – not this might by any objects on a parcel / the sim, not just mesh objects
  • Sims may be rolled back during this initial roll-out with little or not warning.

Full details, including how to volunteer, can be found on the Mesh/Live Volunteer wiki page.

(with thanks to Opensource Obscure)