Month: July 2011

Friends permission bug

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Phoenix team have issued a blog post on a Viewer bug that affects setting permissions for Friends.

From the Phoenix website:

The Bug
You can no longer change permissions for your friends while on a viewer which doesn’t utilize Web Profiles and whether you are, or are not on a viewer that uses web profiles the friend you are changing permissions for needs to relog after you have set the permissions through their web profile. I am assured by LL that they intend to resolve this issue as soon as possible but at this time they cannot provide a date when the fix will be rolled out. You can read the Jira report about the bug herehttps://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7104

The Work Around
In the meantime, there is a work around. First, you must open the “Web” profile of the person you wish to change permissions for. This includes Map rights, Modify my objects permissions and Online status permissions.
1. Open the web profile of the person you wish to change permissions for using the following URL in your web browser.http://my.secondlife.com/firstname.lastname. Replace the first name and last name with the persons first and last name. If they do not have a visible last name dohttp://my.secondlife.com/firstnameinstead.
2. Once you have their profile open, click on the “ACTIONS” button near the top and to the right, then choose “Permissions” from the sub menu.
3. Give or remove the permissions you wish to change and click “Save”.
4. Now the person you’ve changed the permission for will need to relog in order for them to actually get the permission change.

OR

If you just want to remove all permissions for a friend to default, you can just remove them from your friend list and re add them.

With thanks to Jessica Lyon.

Second Life’s Emmy nomination

Posted on by Inara Pey

Second Life received something of an indirect publicity boost today, having gained mention via an Emmy nomination. The Virtual Mine – an extension of Deep Down–A Story From the Heart of Coal Country, aired by PBS – has been nominated under the New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming: Documentaries category.

Deep Down–A Story From the Heart of Coal Country, first broadcast in the autumn of 2010, is an examination of the human consequences  of our environmental impact. The film follows  Beverly May and Terry Ratliff in Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky,, a region that has supplied the USA nation with coal for over a century, and who now find themselves in the midst of a debate dividing their community and the world: who controls, consumes, and benefits from our planet’s shrinking supply of natural resources? While Beverly organizes her neighbours and leads a legal fight to stop Miller Brothers Coal Company from advancing into her hollow, Terry considers signing away the mining rights to his backyard-a decision that could destroy not only the two friends’ homes, but the peace and environment surrounding their community. Through their eyes, the battle over energy and the wealth and environmental destruction it represents in through into sharp relief, and raises questions relating to humankind’s own morality, our connection to the earth’s resources, and most importantly, our link to people whose daily lives are far removed from our own and yet deeply impacted through our actions. Through a complex human story that cuts across environment, economics, public policy, and culture, the story of Beverly May and Terry Ratliff reveals the devastating impact of our energy consumption against an explosive backdrop: Appalachia’s centuries-old struggle over the black rock that fuels our planet.

The Virtual Mine, nominated for an Emmy today, was created as an adjunct to Deep Down, and launched on November 10th 2010 with over 40 people in attendance, including Second Life experts and environmental activists and educators. It is an immersive, educational 3D environment, game, and educational curriculum located within Second Life (Surl) for teachers, students, and anyone who’d like to learn more about mountain top removal, coal fired power production, alternative energies, and the amazing music and culture in the Appalachian mountains. The video below explains some more about the thinking behind the project.

The game can by played individually in in groups, with players progressing sequentially through the first three levels,to achieve “mini-game” outcomes at each level.  Every level contains a video prompt leading players to begin the next phase of this energy story. The first stage of the game examines mining itself and the need for energy; the second looks at reducing our energy demands, and the third looks at alternative energy sources, while the forth chapter provides the opportunity for celebration and to learn about energy conservation.

For teachers, the game offers opportunities to explore a range of subjects with their students, including:

  • Identity, representation and empathy
  • Problem solving and collaboration
  • Exploration and environmental discovery.

Funded by  ITVS and MacArthur Foundation, and developed at BAVC’s Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, the Virtual Mine is open for anyone to explore, and demonstrates the tremendous power of Second Life as an educational tool and also presents a unique and immersive means of supporting the original Deep Down documentary itself.

More information on The Virtual Mine can be found on the Deep Down website. An official press release on the nomination is available from Sand Castle Studios

Emmy winners will be announced on the 26th September 2011. Good luck to all involved, and congratulations on your nomination.

SL Relay For Life 2011 Preview

Posted on by Inara Pey

This weekend will see the “main event” for this year’s Relay For Life activities in Second Life, around which events have been running since March 12th.

Relay For Life is the signature event of the American Cancer Society, and has been active and growing  in Second Life for 7 years. The very first Relay For Life in Second Life (RFL SL), held in 2005 raised almost $5,000 USD for the American Cancer Society, and was attended by a few hundred avatars. In 2010, over $220,000 was raised across the Grid. Events held this year have so far raised of $300,000, bring the total raised over the last 7 years to over $1 million even before the official weekend of festivities kicks-off – a staggering and impressive figure. The event this year is themed on “Seasons of Hope”.

This weekend will see the opening of the official Relay For Life sims, which are packed with information and will play host to a world of events and activities designed to be fun, and to give us all a further opportunity to support the work of the American Cancer Society.

The Events and Activities

RFL SL Welcome Centre

The weekend kicks-off at 10:00 SLT on Saturday 16th July with an opening ceremony, which will be followed at 11:00 by the Celebrate survivors / care-givers honour walk along the RFL SL track – and everyone is invited the line the track and celebrate with these remarkable people.

At 21:00 SLT will be the Luminara Ceremony –  a solumn reflection with readings and inspirational music; sims are darkened for in remembrance of those and their loved ones who have lost their battles to cancer or are still battling it. Again, all are invited to participate and asked to walk the RFL SL track in silence.

Sunday the 17th will see the Fight Back event starting at 06:00 SLT. Pick up your specially made RFL HOPE Cape and Fight Back Flags – available at the Relay Stations,  and join in and make a fight back pledge to save a life this year; your own, a friends, a family member, or someone you don’t even know yet.

Finally, at 10:00 SLT will see the closing ceremony and tribute to all this year’s RFL SL has achieved.

All of these events can be reached via the Relay for Life Welcome Centre.

The activities supporting the weekend are spread across several sims, as follows:

RFL Treatment

The RFL SL autumn / fall events, comprising:

  • Live music
  • Luge / bobsleigh
  • Ice fishing
  • Snail racing
  • Shopping hamlet

RFL Volunteer 

The RFL SL spring activities, comprising:

  • Country music
  • Scavenger hunt
  • Raffle
  • Breedable auction
  • Live & silent auctions
  • Bull riding

RFL Wish

  • DJ stage and hanging gardens
  • Art show and sale
  • Four Seasons Theatre – featuring Alice In Wonderland, short plays, machinima productions & tribute bands

RFL Contemplation

Water activities

The Seasons of Hope water park, featuring:

  • Jules Verne submarine ride
  • Mermaid Cove sandcastle & cabana area featuring reggae DJs
  • Surfer’s cove
  • Water rides

RFL Reflection 

  • Pirate village
  • Naval battles
  • Treasure island
  • Sailing marathon
  • Yacht club
  • Charter ferry to the other water activities
  • Fishing
  • Gypsies and mermaids 

The Welcome Centre and RFL Track

The welcome centre comprises a circular area and flags from the nations of the world, together with a range of information boards that provide more background on RFL, the weekend and the track itself. It operated on a one-way basis, with the direction you should take to work your way around the boards clearly marked. Make sure you pick up the goodies on offer – the RFL guide, pedometer, etc.

Welcome centre information boards

The track itself (reached via a teleport point at the welcome centre), runs through some 34 sims (not including all of the events sims mentioned above), divided into the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn (/fall) and winter. It is here that people can cheer on the participants in the Celebrate walk, and join in the Luminara Ceremony and Fight Back walk. As well as the major events, there will also be themed walks around the track, offering people the opportunity to join in activities in fancy dress, etc.

There are a few simple rules associated with the track: it is a one-way circuit, and slower walkers should keep to the right, please move off the route if you stop to chat or go afk, don’t bring pets that can wander randomly, etc. A full set of the rules is available at the welcome centre.

Looking down the track

The route is lined with donation boxes (this is about raising money, remember!), as features displays and builds put together by the teams participating in this year’s event, which you can explore as you go. With so many sims, region crossings might be an issue, especially if things get busy (to say nothing of the risk of individual sims being down unexpectedly. This has been catered for as far as possible by sim boundaries being clearly marked on the track itself, each of which has a traffic light indicator for the sim ahead: red indicates the sim ahead if either full (avatar-wise) or offline; amber indicates it is subject to heavy use and extreme lag; green indicates all should be OK. However, even if the light for the sim ahead is green, if you can see a lot of folk on one of the walks, you should still approach each boundary with caution to minimise rubber-banding.

The RFL Youthful sim, just off the main track, will be featuring events for younger members of Second Life, including:

Saturday 16th:

  • 10.00-12.00 SLT: Opening and kick-off party
  • 12.00-13.00 SLT: Morgan Canare
  • 13:00-14:00 SLT: Tallyesin Resident
  • 15:00-17:00 SLT: Doctor Who themed party
  • 17:00-18:00 SLT: JennaSue Crosby
  • 20:00-21:00 SLT: LoneWolf55 Genesis
  • 21:00-22:00 SLT: Halloween Costume Hour
  • 23:00-01:00 SLT: Winter Formal Dance

Sunday 17th:

  • 08:00-09:00 SLT: Brett Hansome
  • 10:00-11:00 SLT: Closing Ceremonies

Note that further youth events may also take place.

A famous NYC landmark on the NYHealthscape-sponsored sim

All-in-all, RFL SL offers a magnificent range of displays, activities and events, all in the name of a very worthy and international cause: the fight against cancer. With so much to see and do, I very much hope that all of us can find time to walk the track, enjoy what is on offer and give whatever we can – and don’t forget to visit the event website.

Mesh uploads: more details

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, May 2017: These requirements have now been replaced. See:  Second Life mesh upload prerequisites revised.

Back at the start of June, we learned that the ability to upload Mesh to SL is to be gated. You can currently take a peek at how this works by going to your Beta (aditi) Grid status page.

Click on the right-pointing arrow next to Account to display your account options, then click on MESH UPLOAD STATUS (located between SCRIPTED AGENT STATUS and CHANGE PASSWORD, as circled below).

Mesh Upload Status page

To qualify for Mesh uploads, you must provide payment information to Linden Lab, and complete a Mesh Intellectual Property Right tutorial / questionnaire, which comprises a series of multiple-choice questions, as shown below.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire is not mind-bogglingly difficult – and it shouldn’t be, the idea is to make people aware of what will not be tolerated and can lead to their ability to upload meshes being revoked; not to try and catch them out before they even get started. As such, it is possible to go back a step should you get any question wrong and then take the question again.

Completing the questionnaire results in you being informed that you are now cleared to upload meshes, and provides a link to some additional information related to trademarks and copyright under US law. I was actually surprised that there are (currently, at least) no links to Linden Lab’s own policies around mesh and IP.

Upload away (at least on the Beta Grid)!

Important Notes!

  • This is still currently *only* available on beta grid dashboard pages (https://secondlife.aditi.lindenlab.com/my/).
  • You won’t currently see the option if you are using your main Grid dashboard page (at https://secondlife.com/my/).
  • It is possible what completing the questionnaire at this point in time may only apply to the Beta grid – you might have to complete the questionnaire again once the link is available from main Grid dashboard pages.

Firestorm: usage grows & new video out

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoThe Firestorm development team report that Linden Lab has confirmed Firestorm is now the third most popular viewer by number of distinct users and in terms of hours spent using SL. This moves it into third place in terms of popularity, ahead of the old official 1.23 Viewer.

According to the Viewer Directory (last updated 12th July), Firestorm sits in sixth place overall in terms of crash rates, putting it directly behind the official 2.7.2 release, and up on the official 2.7.5 release. Interestingly, the current full release of the official Viewer (2.7.4) isn’t listed.

To aid people making the transition from the Viewer 1.x environment, Phoenix have produced a new video tutorial, which is well worth a look-in:

(with thanks to CS Pfeffer for the nod on the video)

LL start recommending “connections”

Posted on by Inara Pey

The new web profiles with their social hooks are heading our way and are likely to be here in the next few weeks. In the meantime, LL appear to be upping the Social Game with their latest e-mail to residents. 

If you’ve filled out the INTERESTS section of your web profile, the chances are you’ve received (or will shortly be receiving) an e-mail from LL inviting you to make new friends, and offering you a few suggestions for people you’d like to connect with, like the one shown below.

Clicking on any of the images / names supplied in the advert will take you to the individual’s web profile, where you can look them over and even send them a friendship request.

I’m not sure how well-received this approach to making “connections” is going to be received. Leaving aside the fact that a “connection” and a “friend” are somewhat different concepts, this approach is fraught with basic problems.

On the one hand, those who have been in SL any length of time are going to be loathe to start sending out unsolicited friendship requests without any initial contact (although, of course, this approach doesn’t do anything to prevent a more “traditional” approach to contacting people listed in the e-mail prior to making friendship offers). Thus, there is every possibility such e-mails will be either ignored, or give rise to more people removing themselves from LL’s mailing list.

On the other hand, where this new service is used to start firing-off friendship offers without any prior contact, then it is liable to result in the vast majority of such offers being ignored by the recipients coupled with a rise in their annoyance at receiving such unsolicited requests. Hardly what LL are aiming for.

Thus, as well-meaning as it is, I can’t help feeling this initiative isn’t going to be as successful as LL hope (assuming it is going to being a regular thing). In fact, if LL want people to create networks of contacts using the new social media tools coming to web profiles, there are potentially much better ways of going about it.

One, for example, would be to give people the option to simply follow others in much the same way as Twitter. The would add considerable value to the Feed tool in the new web profiles – particularly if an individual’s Feed tab became a central point from which they could review comments and thoughts not just from Friends or those leaving comments on their profiles, but also from those they have elected to passively follow, without impinging on their virtual lives by repeated offers of Friendship.

It’s going to be interesting to see how these e-mails are received, and indeed, how long they last.